


A place to stand.

by orphan



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Anal Sex, Asphyxiation, Bathing/Washing, Drag Queens, Drug Use, Face-Fucking, Feels, Flashbacks, M/M, Manhandling, Oral Sex, Road Trips, Sex Work, Some Porn Mostly Plot, desert domestic, fanon-typical violence, non-canon backstory, strayan mate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-06 08:58:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13407831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan/pseuds/orphan
Summary: When Mako Rutledge is in Year Six, he makes friends with the Rat Girl.As usual, Junkrat has a plan: heading east, along the ruins of Plenty, into Queensland. As usual, Roadhog is along for the ride.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So... yeah. Full disclaimer: This is knowingly and aggressively non-compliant with "Wasted Land", basically because... You can't tell me what to do, Blizzard! Hah!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor **content warning** for animal cruelty at the beginning of this chapter.
> 
>  _Lumped in, looking for peace, but won't find it_  
>  _They holdin' us back from closing the gap by keeping them close minded_  
>  _See, no surprises there, hearing both of them sirens blare_  
>  _Them coppers where I'm from are kind of fair,[if you kinda fair](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICcewg7fxho)._

When Mako Rutledge is in Year Six, he makes friends with the Rat Girl.

Her real name is Renay, and the nickname has less to do with her overbite and . . . unfortunate odor as it is the fact she's the girl who, repeatedly, without fail, brings her rats in for Show and Tell. Reany, it seems, has exactly one interest, that interest is her rats, and that interest is something she'll talk about, at length, to anyone unfortunate enough to stand close enough to hear it.

The boys leave Renay alone. There's a pecking order at St. Philips and boys and girls are most definitely in different leagues. Borders versus day kids, too; Mako is the former and Renay is the latter, on both counts, and by the Law of the School there's no way either of them should cross paths.

Except Mako is five feet if he’s an inch, and easily twice the weight of the next biggest kid in the school. And what that means is that Mako? Mako is a Law unto himself.

It's Jacinta who loathes Reany the most. Mako has no idea why, and maybe there isn't a reason beyond the fact that Renay is a target and Jacinta a weapon. She's a cunt of a girl, Jacinta. Mako thinks it then and he'll think it later, albeit minus the odd sort of shivery thrill that comes from being all of twelve years old and saying a grown-up word like “cunt”, even if only in his own head. Asides from that, Jacinta is a tiny slip of a thing, as blonde as Bondi sand, the daughter of some townie cunts from Alice; the sort of people who run the sort of shop that sells overpriced faux “Aboriginal” art, direct from China. Mako hates her, in the same rough, ill-defined way he thinks he hates every pakeha leech sucking the blood from stolen land.

Renay’s dad, Mako knows, runs a cafe is town. Her mum is Anangu and works for Parks and Wildlife, taking tourists to the Rock and trying to convince them not to walk up it. She'd done a talk for the class in Year Four about Country and Mako had felt a strange sort of emptiness afterwards. When he'd tried to explain it, Mum had touched his cheek and told him he was yearning for turangawaewae. Mako hadn't understood what she'd meant at the time. Or in the decades after, really.

Point being, Renay loves her rats and Jacinta loathes her for it, which is how the latter ends up with one of the former’s one recess. Mako only knows what's happening by the screaming; Renay, being held down by two of Jacinta’s goons as the girl in question holds a rodent aloft in one hand and a can of Impulse in the other.

“Fuckin’ dirty feral piece of shit,” Jacinta is saying when Mako gets close enough to hear. “Gonna clean you right up!”

Mako knows, in the same way everyone at school knows, that Renay’s rats are named Thor and Loki (“One of ours,” Mum had said, when they'd left the theatre. “That was one of ours. And the whole world saw!”). The rat Jacinta is holding is black and white (“Piebald,” Renay would correct) and it  _screams_  when Jacinta sprays it with the deodorant. So does Renay, sobbing and pleading.

Mako isn't the only bystander, and he feels the mood among the kids change. Tormenting Renay is just recess but torturing an animal, even a stupid filthy rat . . .

Then, suddenly, it's Jacinta who’s shrieking. “It bit me!” She doesn't drop the rat so much throw it violently to the grass. The tiny body bounces then is still, huddled in on itself, Jacinta sneering as she raises a sneakered foot. “I'm gonna get rabies!” she says, cradling her hand. “It bit me and I'm gonna get rabies!”

Mako can see what comes next, clear as day. Jacinta is going to bring her foot down, and Renay’s stupid rat is going to die. Crushed. Just because it tried to defend itself.

“Die, filthy thing!”

“Hey.” Mako steps forward. He's not the oldest kid in the crowd or the tallest, but he is the biggest, by a long shot, and the other kids part to let him through like the ocean around his namesake. “Enough. Rack off, Jaz.”

Jacinta pauses, foot still raised. There's a strange kind of madness in her eyes, a glassy red haze Mako’s never seen before but will certainly see again. Then she blinks, and it's gone. “What— what's it to you, piggy?” she spits, but there's a waver in her voice. A weakness. Like the moment has passed and the realization of what she's doing, what she's about to do, is slowing creeping through.

Mako says nothing, just stares, arms folded across his barrel of a chest. Around him, the crowd mutters, mood shifting from bloodthirst to guilt. Even Renay is still and quiet.

One second. Two. Three. Then:

“Fine. Gotta go wash my hand, anyway.” Jacinta gestures to her goons, who give Renay one final shove into the grass before standing. Mako watches them, and the crowd, go.

Renay, meanwhile, has scrambled forward, picking up the trembling little body of her rat in her hands and holding it against her chest. “—not dirty,” she's muttering. “Don't have rabies. There's no rabies in Australia! Mum said!”

Mako watches her for a while, then: “‘S’it okay?”

Renay startles a little at his voice, like she didn't realize he was still there. She doesn't look up, body curled over and curtain of thick dark curls hiding her face.

“She was gonna kill him!” she says. “She was— He’s just . . . just a stupid little rat. Never hurt anybody. Never even bit anyone before. And she was gonna  _kill_  him. Squash him. Why? Why would she do that? I don't—” Her voice hitches, thick and wet with shock and grief. “Thor would be alone.” Quiet again, not really talking to Mako. “He can't be alone! You can't have one rat! They need a  _friend_. They go . . . they go mental, otherwise. It's science!”

Mako doesn't know what to say, so says nothing.

“Thank you,” Renay eventually sniffs, standing. She still has her cupped hands close against her chest, but she holds them out, tentative. “Loki says ‘thank you’ too.” Dark eyes peer over Renay’s fingers, little nose twitching as the rat regards Mako. It's kind of cute, he supposes. For a rat.

“Why would she do it?” Renay asks again. “Even . . . even if she hates me, why would she try and kill him?”

Mako thinks about this, reaching out a finger. He holds it just above the rat’s head, and the little thing reaches up to sniff it, curious.

“Dunno,” Mako says, feeling the tickle of tiny whiskers on his skin. “People’re just shit, I guess.”

It is, he’ll think later, the first time he ever voices this opinion out loud.

The first, but not even close to the last.

* * *

“He's wanted alive, understand? But not necessarily in one piece.”

Years later. The inside of the converted shipping container feels like the back of the Devil’s sweaty ballsack and smells just about as sweet, mask filters or no. A fan swings lazy overhead but does nothing except keep the hot air restless and the flies in motion.

The boy who'd once been called Mako is now a man called, optimistically, Roadhog, or more commonly, Ohfuckno Notyou. The chair he's sitting on is too small, the holo he's been handed flickering with the vintage-TV-grain of re-re-repurposed wiring. The face it's projecting is thin and sharp and manic, wild-eyed and soot-smudged, twitching in the sort of way that fucks with the 3D cameras, blurring and ghosting the capture round the edge. Maybe deliberate, maybe not. Hard to tell, given the subject.

Hog knows Jamison “Junkrat” Fawkes by reputation and gossip, like everyone else in this forgotten shithole of a desert. Fawkes is a problem, for multiple people and multiple reasons. Hog supposes it was only a matter of time before someone came to him to solve it.

That someone is sitting on the far side of a too-wide desk, sweating through his wool suit and high-backed leather chair. Jim Gribbon is the sort of man people would describe as a toad, assuming they wanted to be offensive to toads, right down to the blond pencil mustache and unconvincing comb-over. Not the sort of man people would assume survived long in the Outback, except even Junkertown needs its share of bootlickers and pencilpushers. Besides, Hog can see the old scars that run across Gribbon’s knuckles. The sort of scars that suggest the man hadn't always been chained behind a patched-up desk.

“How much?” Theres only one question Hog cares about, so he asks it.

“Fifty thousand,” Gribbon says, smooth as a stiletto, and Hog scoffs.

“Don't waste my ti—”

“Dollars. Fifty thousand Australian dollars.”

Hog pauses. Gribbon is grinning, the melodramatic little turd. He planned that.

“Bullshit.” The Outback hasn't run on fiat since the core blew. Closest thing it gets are the chits used in town, everything else is barter. No law means no government means no banks means no cash, and bringing any quantity of coastal dollars into the centre is a one-way ticket to Yatala.

Except Gribbon is shrugging, reaching beneath his desk and pulling out a battered metal briefcase. It unlocks with a complex biometric; the sort that's designed to incinerate the case’s contents on tamper. Gribbon swings the open case around to show Hog what's inside; neat green-gold bricks of hundred dollar notes, crisp as the day they were minted.

Gribbon takes one of the bricks and tosses it to Hog. “Here,” he says. “Consider it a downpayment. You get the rest when I get Fawkes.”

Hog runs rough fingers over the surface of the banknotes. It's been a long time since he's handled real money and he's hardly an expert but this . . . it  _feels_  real. Hard to counterfeit, Hog knows, as he checks the foils and window and the detail in Melba’s hair.

Fifty thousand dollars. There's a lot a man could do with fifty thousand dollars.

“Yeah,” he says, pocketing the money. “All right.” He stands, topknot brushing against the ceiling.

“Alive,” Gribbon repeats, grin vicious and greasy. “And talking. We have a  _lot_  to talk about.”

Hog just grunts, and gets to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... help.
> 
>  _My superhuman abilities, supernatural_  
>  Man I'm an animal, [eatin' it like a cannibal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTZhiWZxV5E).


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _For what it's worth, the second verse, reversed the curse upon the earth_   
>  _Mixing up a storm, brewing up a tornado_   
>  _I was running down the street, just screaming I was blind_   
>  _But I lost my voice, like I[lost my mind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gEy2FJ_AiA)_

“Fire in th’oo-oo-ole!”

Later still. Another record hot afternoon in a century of the same, standing covered in blood and soot in the smoking rubble of what had, until ten minutes ago, been the safehouse of Maddox “Maddog” Red.

Hog grins at the spluttering roar of the RIP-Tire, then the shouted curses and thundering footsteps of the men trying to escape it.

Funny thing about safehouses, Hog thinks. They tend not to have that many exits. Three, in fact, for this particular establishment. One is currently filled with whirring, spiked death. The second makes itself known a moment later when some now-dead drongo trips a mine. Just the one, by the sound of it, but that's okay. More than okay. Hog can do the rest.

Like herding fucking sheep.

The first junker out the door gets Hog’s hook to his chest and is whirled, screaming, three-sixty and straight into junker number two.

“Shit!” comes a voice. “Fuck, it’s Roadhog, he—”

That's as far as he gets, because Hog is charging, scrap gun raised to blast hot shrapnel through the unlucky fucker’s head. It evaporates into red mist while the body freezes, as if in momentary shock, before falling to the floor. That leaves two. One turns tail and legs it—Hog lets him go and just waits for the explosion—while the other raises a pistol and empties three shots into Hog’s chest.

It hurts, and he staggers, growling with annoyance. But he doesn't go down.

“Fuck. Oh fuck. Fuck, it's true. You're a fucking monster! You aren't human, you're not, you—”

The tirade is interrupted by the explosion as the penultimate junker meets a mine. The shockwave rocks the house and sends the last of the group stumbling, enough for Hog to get his hook into the soft flesh of the junker’s belly.

“Hngh!” the junker says, which turn out to be his last words as Hog  _pulls_  and the hook tears through flesh and fat and muscle. There’s the unmistakable smell of human shit as the junker’s intestines suddenly find themselves succumbing to gravity outside of the confining sack of his skin, and then he’s crumpling to the floor, screaming and trying in vain to push back in his everted guts.

Hog watches him for a moment, impassive. Then stomps down hard on the wretch’s head, finishing him off for good.

After that, there’s silence. Well, mostly silence; there’s a whimpering from somewhere deeper inside the safehouse, but the pitch is unfamiliar and Hog isn’t worried. Instead, he gives the joint a quick casing, careful to avoid any pre-laid mines or traps. In about the third room his chest starts to give him trouble, so he pulls out a canister of biotic and takes a huff. He won’t lie; the little metallic  _tlink-tlink-tlink_  sound of the slugs being pushed from his body never gets old. Nor does the fuzzy warmth that seeps in to replace the pain, or the momentary lightness in his lungs.

When he thinks he’s got the lay of the house, he heads back towards the whimpering, now accompanied by two voices; one familiar, one not.

The familiar voice is saying:

“—owe me, y’see. You took somethin’ a’mine. And I’ve been pretty generous, but now? Now it’s time to collect.”

The back room of the safehouse is something like an office, in that it has a repurposed stack of cinder blocks and MDF that serves as a desk, looming over a duct-taped old office chair. Currently, the chair is occupied by Maddox Red. Whether he wants to or not, really, given that he’s pinned to the back through the shoulder by the spear-tipped peg leg of Roadhog’s alleged boss.

“J-Jamie,” Red is saying. “Jamie, this . . . this is all— It was an accident! I swear! And— Jesus, Jamie. It’s been, what? Ten years? You . . . We were mates!”

Jamie—Junkrat, Roadhog’s “boss”—is sitting on the desk, too-thin chin propped in his flesh hand.

“Right,” he says, studying his metallic right fingers. “We were, ay? Some good times we ‘ad.”

“Yeah,” says Red. “Yeah, Jamie, I— What ‘appened, ‘appened. It’s in the past, yeah?”

“In the past,” Rat repeats. He moves his flesh hand up to the bicep of his right arm, deftly flicking safeties and connectors. “Should just . . . let it go, right?”

Red starts to relax. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Jamie, I— Shit, I’m sorry. But . . . it’s all good. It was all a long time ago, yeah?”

One final metallic snap and the Boss’s right arm disconnects from the stump of flesh protruding from his shoulder. “Long time ago, yeah,” Rat agrees. “Ahaha. Guess that’s why me arm regrew in th—” He pauses, looking between the prosthetic and the flesh stump he’s just detached it from. “Oh. Wait a tic. Looks like it—”

“Jamie!” is all Red gets out, before Junkrat has slapped him across the jaw with the lifeless metal hulk of his right arm.

“You traitorous fuck!” Rat snarls, mood shifting in a moment, shaking his right arm where he holds it in his left.

Red spits, blood and teeth clattering to the filthy floor. “Fuck you!” he snarls right back. “You mad cunt! We never would’ve been in the fuckin’ shit if it weren’t for you, you filthy son of a whor—”

This time, Rat hits his former “friend” with enough force to make even Roadhog wince. He’s been slapped with that prosthetic enough times to know the damn thing is  _heavy_ ; with heft behind it, it can easily break a jaw, which is exactly what happenes to Red.

The junker makes an outraged gurgling sound, that only increases in pitch as Junkrat shifts his right leg, enough to haul Red up from where that prosthetic is lodged through his shoulder.

“You,” Rat snarls, “leave me mum outta it, y’hear me?”

“Fuck you!” Red says, or tries to; it comes out less like words and more like a bloodied gurgle.

“You never did know when to shut y’gob,” Rat says. He’s dropped his arm onto the desk and is tossing a ball up and down in his left hand instead. Except it’s not a ball, Hog knows. It’s a bomb. “Think it’s time someone shut it for ya.” And Rat lunges forward, smashing the bomb between Red’s teeth.

Roadhog takes a step forward, but Rat is already rolling out of the way; somersaulting backwards over the desk, leg extracting itself from Red’s shoulder as he does. There’s a second of movement, then one of stunned silence. Then Hog is turning his head away as everything of Red above the nipple is reduced to pulp and fireworks.

Thus endeth Maddox “Maddog” Red.

Junkrat is already extracting himself from the floor, well-clear of the blast and rolling himself upright. Hog watches his boss collect his arm and gives him a moment to stare at the mangled corpse of his former fiend.

There’s a heavy silence for one second, then two. Even with Rat mostly turned away Hog can see his boss’s thick brows are drawn down into a scowl and his fingers keep clenching into a white-knuckled fist. Hog leaves him to it for a moment, then shifts just enough to disrupt the floorboards with a heavy groan. Rat startles at the sound, an odd sort of shivery jiggle running down his spine. By the time he turns around, his wide-eyes and manic grin are firmly back in place, and he's started the motions to set his arm back to the same.

“Hoggie! Din't seeya there, mate.”

This is, of course, a lie. But so is most of Junkrat, so Hog lets it slide. “Boss,” he says instead. “Come look.”

Rat does so without arguing which, if nothing else, shows he's still off-kilter from his encounter with Maddox Red. Something about Rat’s arm; Hog has heard the story of how Rat lost it a thousand times, in just as many variations. Red featured in none of them.

Hog leads them deeper into the house, stepping over blood and bodies, and into the storeroom at the back. Rat’s eyes flare up like the wind-blown remains of a summer bushfire when he sees what Hog has found.

“Oh, Hoggie! Look at you, you precious treasure-sniffin’ truffle pig!” He launches himself at Roadhog, planting a big noisy kiss against the side of Hog’s mask, and is gone just as quickly. “Hooley-dooley, wouldya lookkit this! This is the motherload, it is!”

It's drugs; bricks and bags and bottles stacked floor-to-ceiling. Some medical, all recreational, and the whole haul would be worth thousands either side of the Outback, assuming they could find somewhere to offload it.

Rat’s a hurricane of energy, former funk apparently forgotten as he darts between shelves, investigating the contents. Hog catches his fingers no less than three times before he can snort or lick something stupid, and Rat whines and rants but eventually relents.

“Won't be able t’carry all of it,” Hog muses, fingers drumming against the plastic-wrapped surface of what has to be a generous kilo of cocaine.

“Fifty-fifty, burn the rest!” announces Rat who, to be fair to the kid, didn't exactly major in mathematics.

Numbers aside, it's a good enough plan. They load up the bike with as much as it can carry, which is plenty, then Hog retreats to an allegedly safe distance (“Back a bit . . . back a bit . . . stop! No. Bit more. More. Mo-oo-ore aa-aa-and . . . stop!”) as Rat goes to work lighting up the night.

Roadhog had assumed, mostly by the boss’s description, that Red was a small-time shitheel and this little adventure was to be for fun, not profit. But by the look of the haul—especially the crate of high-grade medical biotics, now all tucked safely into the bike’s panniers—Red had some serious suppliers. Ones who, undoubtedly, will have some opinions on two fugitive junkers jacking their logistics network.

Good. They can join the fucking queue.

The safehouse goes up in a showy explosion that, Hog is sure, will be seen and heard halfway to Brisbane. Rat whoops and dances in the backdraft, arms raised as if he can pluck the firework blooms right out of the evening sky. Hog leaves him to it, unrolling his swag from the side of the bike. Not the most discreet place to camp but, fuckit. If someone wants to have a go in the ruins, let them try.

Hog digs a pit for a fire, which always strikes him as ludicrous, considering what's going on just downwind, but he can't exactly cook in the chemical burn of one of Rat’s disaster parties. So he gathers his own scrap wood—plenty around the former shack—and by the time Rat’s finished jacking off to the flames, Hog has a fat loaf of damper roasting one pot and is brewing tea in another.

“Found these unlucky bastards,” Rat announces when he appears, holding the charred corpse of a king brown and a goanna. “Shockwave gottem, I reckon. Boom! Ahahaha!”

“Chuck ‘em ‘ere.” Rat’s hands are too twitchy on anything that doesn't explode to dress meat, and Hog doesn't feel like suffering through a mouthful of snake shit from a busted gut if he doesn't have to.

Both creatures are as long as Rat is tall, easy, and Hog always liked the meat on the lizard in particular. Kind of all the best bits of chicken and fish, mild and oily. He leaves the skins on but takes the guts out with a few practices flicks of a knife, aware of Rat’s intense, ember-eyed regard as he does. By the time he's thrown them into the fire, Rat’s pulled out the damper, tearing off steaming chunks with his right hand and burning himself with his left. The bread’s still wet and soggy in the middle, but that's how Rat likes it and Hog’s long since given up trying to change his mind.

They still have half a jar of the grasstree syrup Hog made a few weeks back, plus a few handfuls of pigweed. Rat slathers too much of the former over his damper and complains at length about the latter, but eats it on Hog’s growled insistence. They’re far enough east that the radiation in the soil is weak, and any time Hog can eat off the land and not from a can is a time he's going to take advantage of. And force Rat to do the same; the last thing they need is the kid to come down with a case of scurvy or some shit on top of everything else.

For all that he's a chronically skinny bastard, Rat eats messily and with gusto, tearing into the flesh of the king brown, crunching the smaller bones between his teeth and slurping the stringy meat from anything larger. Hog is slower with his own food, mask sitting up on his head, watching the emerging stars as he slurps the meat off the goanna’s legs, leaving the best part of the tail until last.

Rat babbles, because Roadhog is fairly sure the kid would explode if he didn't. Hog isn't listening and doesn't contribute, and neither seem to matter. Instead, he starts cleaning up the things from dinner; tossing carcasses into the descending darkness and scrubbing the crumbs from the inside of the damper oven.

By the time he's done, Rat is well-and-truly entrenched into some story-cum-outrageous-lie about . . . shit. Hog isn't even sure. Explosions feature heavily, but they always do when Junkrat’s talking, often in excruciating technical detail. Which can be sort of interesting. Sometimes. Not that that Hog would ever say, but Rat’s almost entirely self-taught to the point Roadhog isn't even sure he'd be able to identify a periodic table, let alone know what to do with one. Yet the kid’s undeniably got an intuitive grasp of chemistry and engineering that borders on the savant. It's something Hog doesn't like to think about much; just who could Jamison Fawkes have been, in the version of the country Hog grew up in?

Shit. Now he's just gonna piss himself off. And the day’s been too much fun and the night’s been to satisfying to let it end like that. So:

“Hey, boss. Get over’ere.” And Hog leans back, legs spread, palm rubbing over his crotch in invitation.

Rat blinks at him, wide-eyed, exactly once. Then his face splits into one of his manic grins, and he’s kicking up dust as he scrambles to get between Hog’s thighs. “Oh,” he says, long fingers eagerly working Hog’s belt and grill. “Yeah, righto.”

(The first time had gone something like this:

“Hey, Hoggie. Wamme t’give ya a blowie? Ahahaha!”

And Hog has considered this, and the fact he hadn't had his dick sucked in, shit. Far too long. And the fact that even Junkrat couldn't blab around a mouthful of meat. And so had said:

“Yeah. All right.”)

Junkrat, despite all expectations, is an absolute legend at giving head. And hand shandies. And taking Hog’s fat cock up his tight little arse, for that matter, though they usually don't have the time or the equipment for that one. Rat's also wound tighter than a two-bob watch and two good tugs away from popping on most days, meaning he's almost never not in the mood, meaning Hog’s gotten his dick wet more in the last few months than any time since the core blew and, hell. Maybe even before. Not the most immediate benefit he'd been thinking of when he'd signed onto this “bodyguard” gig, but he'll take it either way.

Once Rat gets going he doesn't need much handling, so Hog leans back against the rolled-up swag and sighs. He threads the fingers of one hand through the tangled nest of Rat’s hair, urging the kid closer until his nose is buried in Hog’s pubes.

Hog is still mostly soft, meaning he mostly fits in the wet heat of Rat’s mouth, and that's nice on its own. The kid’s tongue is even better, though, and the feel of Hog getting thicker and harder, filling up the space to overflowing, until Rat gives a half-strangled choke. But the kid is a champion, and doesn't try and pull back; just swallows around Hog’s cock and opens his throat to take the pressure. Hog gives him a moan in appreciation, fingers tightening in Rat’s hair as he starts to thrust, shallow at first, though getting faster and rougher as he loses himself in the feel of it.

Fuck, it's good. Hot and tight, Rat’s metal fingers digging hard into Hog’s thigh, while the kid’s flesh hand rolls and rubs at Hog’s heavy sack.

Unbelievably, the little shit is still talking although, with a mouth stuffed with pork, it comes out as a muffled hum Hog feels all the way down to his toes. Toes that are curling inside his boots, foot shifting flat against the ground to give him better leverage, both hands wrapping around Rat’s head as Hog face-fucks the kid in earnest. Rat chokes around the invasion of it, but his own skinny hips are wrapped around Hog’s other leg, humping it with the fervour of an emu in autumn, so Hog figures the kid’s all right.

The stars above have come out in earnest, the Milky Way winding like a diamond-studded serpent through the black velvet of space, and Hog watches it as long as he can while he feels the heat build beneath his belly. It’s a particularly enthusiastic hum-suck combo from Rat that sets him off, spine arching as he blows his load hot and thick down the kid’s eager throat, world blurring into darkness.

Hog sighs in the aftermath; that one perfect moment floating in numb bliss, when he can be no one with no past, just a warm body cradled between the earth and stars. A moment, no more, and when Hog comes back to himself it’s with the feel of sand caked against his sweaty back, while a hot tongue laps at his softening dick and hard hips rut against his thigh.

“Hey,” Hog says, tugging on Rat’s shoulder. “Up’ere.”

Rat doesn't need to be told twice, scrambling up until he's sitting on Hog’s belly, thighs splayed out wide and rolling with the rough in-out of Hog’s breath. Rat’s shorts are open and his dick is out, flushed and hard and pink. Still buzzing from his own orgasm, Hog plays with the kid a little; rubbing big hands over his belly and nipples, slapping Rat’s hands away whenever he tries to touch himself.

“Hog!” Rat whines, hips tilting and rubbing pre all over Hog’s tattoo. “Hoggie, c’mon!” His voice is all shot to shit from having Hog’s dick jammed down his throat, and the sound of it . . . does things in Hog’s chest.

Probably just an impending heart attack. God knows Hog’s old enough to be due.

“C’mon c’mon c’mon, Hog, Hoggie, Roadie, please! I gotta cum, mate. I gotta, I just—” Rat’s hands are wrapped around Hog’s wrist, desperately trying to drag the touch where he wants it.

Hog just huffs, a sound that’s definitely annoyance and nothing fond, and no one can see his face to prove otherwise.

“Impatient,” Hog says, but shifts his palm to where Rat wants it.

Two thrusts and Rat is cumming, laughing like a goddamn kookaburra as he shoots his load all over Hog’s hand and chest. The kid is such a fucking disaster, and Hog runs his clean hand over the side that scrawny, heaving torso as Rat comes down.

“Mako . . .” Rat says and, shit. Why is it times like this are the only ones Rat seems to remember his damn name?

“Y’made a mess,” Hog says in reply, because it seems safer than anything else.

Rat blinks twice, bleary and unfocused, then looks down at the drying cum splattered on Hog’s skin.

“Oh, right. No worries, eh?” he says, then puts himself to work licking Hog clean.

 _Disaster,_  Hog thinks, as his eyes slide closed.  _Every fuckin’ inch of him._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is literally the most Aussie thing I've ever written holy shit.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Pick up the phone, I'm here alone_  
>  _Or make a social call_  
>  _Come right in, forget 'bout him_  
>  _We'll[have ourselves a ball](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whQQpwwvSh4), hey._

In theory, finding one single man in the whole of the Outback should be a fool’s errand. The place is bigger than goddamn Europe and is, as Roadhog well knows, when men come to lose themselves.

Except Hog’s not the only one on Fawkes’s tail, and given the man’s signature style, it isn't that hard to follow the trail of smoking craters and missing limbs.

Fawkes moves in predictable patterns, and never more than a day or so away from Junkertown or the ruins of the Omnium. The man’s either an idiot, a lunatic, or there's something he doesn't want to get too far from and, honestly, from everything Hog’s heard it could be either any of the above or all.

Hog follows Fawkes’s trail for maybe a week. He's in no hurry; Gribbon didn't specify a timeframe, and the number of bodies Fawkes leaves in his wake means Hog’s not worried about someone jumping the bounty ahead of him. Besides, he's done this chase a thousand times before. Word travels fast, even in the desert, and Hog likes to let his reputation precede him. More of a chance his quarry will panic and fuck up. Never fails, that one.

It's on the morning of the sixth day, however, that Hog gets the feeling he might be being played. Because Fawkes has been looping back, all right. Right back to Hog’s station.

It isn't the original house, that’s long-since levelled. By the omnics or the blast or the Junkers, Hog doesn't know. He does know it's his land, though—his parents’ land, before those cunts in Canberra stole it away to give to the Arnies—and the house there now he fucking built, and if that little shit Fawkes so much as singes it Hog is going to rip his bloody arm off.

If it burns, it'll be the head. Money or no money.

Fawkes gets to the house first. He's sitting on the front porch when Hog roars up the dusty drive, camel—a fuckin’  _camel_ , of all things—tied to the post, drinking from a plastic barrel Hog knows he does not own. Fawkes is doing something to what looks like a spike-studded tire, but he jumps up when he hears Hog approach. He doesn't run, though. He  _waves_. Hopping on his goddamn pegleg, like he's fucking excited to see Hog and not spitting distance from death.

“‘Ay,” he calls, when Hog stops the bike. “‘Ay, yer Roadhog, right? Well, ‘ave I got a—” is as far as he gets. Hog has one moment to think, briefly, that Fawkes’s voice isn't what he expects—nasal and kinda shrill—before Hog’s hook catches the skinny cunt round the middle and yanks him forward.

Fawkes’s gun is still sitting on the front porch—whatever he’s doing here, it apparently didn't involve expecting violence—but Hog isn't stupid enough to think that means the man isn't dangerous. The harness of explosives is testament to that, and Hog tears it from Fawkes's back, buckles snapping as Fawkes cries out in shock and pain.

“—waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait!” he’s babbling. “Gottit all wrong mate! I dunno what they told you but hnnnargh!” This last because Hog has also torn Fawkes’s metal arm from its stump. It doesn't come easy but there are failsafes, Hog thinks, because when it gives it gives in a single piece. Hog drops it to the dust. Fawkes is writhing like a landed eel, still trying to babble out something Hog doesn't listen to. It's . . . easy. Too easy, in fact, and Hog almost thinks he can hear . . .

“Shut up,” he growls. He has Fawkes's under one arm and he slaps a hand over the man’s mouth. It doesn't stop the talking but it does muffle the noise. Enough that the roar of engines becomes obvious.

Hog spins, just in time to see three vehicles scream up to his home. Junkertown cars, converted utes and jeeps, bristling with guns and betrayal.

“Fuck,” snarls Hog. Two hands on Fawkes and none to hold his weapon. Fuck.

“Friends’a yours?” Muffled but audible from between Hog’s fingers.

“Shut up.”

“Right, but, y’see—”

The door of the central car opens. Roadhog is in no way surprised to see none other than Jim Gribbon step out.

“Well well well,” Gribbon says. “This turned out easier than I expected. Thank you for your assistance, Mister Rutledge, but your services are no longer required. It seems I've been able to locate the target without your . . . intervention.”

“Hooley-dooley,” Fawkes says. “This drongo, really?”

“Shut it.” Then, to Gribbon: “We had a deal.”

Gribbon shrugs. “For you to retrieve Mister Fawkes outside of our dear little city. This land”—he gestures to Hog’s property—”belongs to the Queen.”

Hog will kill them. Every goddamn one of them. “This is  _my_  land!”

“Don't misconstrue the Queen’s generosity for title,” Gribbon says. “She  _allows_  your presence. Honestly, Mister Rutledge. You think you would've learnt your lesson by now.”

(“Air!” Fawkes gasps, as Hog’s fists clench. “Air!”)

“Give me Fawkes,” Gribbon continues. “And keep the downpayment. For your . . . inconvenience.”

“So’ere's’a’thing,” Fawkes blurts. “Looks like you need a new boss, and whaddya know, I'm hirin’! Bodyguard. Full time. Indefinite. Payment ten— No, fifteen percent of all loot ‘n’ treasure. Startin’ immediately.”

Three cars. Four blokes in the left, gatling gun mounted on the rollbar.

“All right all right all right. Twenty percent.”

Two in the right car, shotguns. Plus one in the tray, grenade launcher.

“Thirty!” Getting desperate now. “That's me final offer! You gonna let these dropkicks run y’off yer land?”

“Don't do anything stupid, Mister Rutledge.”

Final car. Only one, but he has a rifle. Trained right over Roadhog’s heart.

Fuck.

And Roadhog says:

“Fifty. Fifty percent.”

“Deal!” Not even any hesitation, which Hog will think about later. “But that means you gotta pull y’rown weight. Fifty-fifty treasure, fifty-fifty kills.”

“You talk too damn much.”

“Been told it's me best quality,” Fawkes lies. He shifts, just slightly, and when Hog dares look down he sees a detonator, clutched in the kid’s remaining hand. “Three steps back, if y’don’t mind.”

Roadhog obeys.

“Don't be stupid, Rutledge,” says Gribbon. “Just give me the fucking kid.”

And Fawkes says:

“Dun-nun na-na na-na na nah nah! Boom boom! Ahahahaha!”

And presses the trigger. And the world obeys.

* * *

Later, but not by much:

“You trapped my house!”

Fawkes squirms where Roadhog has thrown him against the object in question’s siding. “Just a little!” he squarks. “Just . . . insurance, right? And a good thing, too, euhuhuhuhu! The looks on their faces, right Hoggy—”

“ _Road_ hog.”

“Right right. But the looks! Like”—somehow, Fawkes’s expression gets even more goggle-eyed—”and then, boom! And then, with the arm and, and—”

Hog sighs, and lets the kid go. He has a front yard full of scrap to sort and body parts to get rid of, and throttling Fawkes isn't gonna help with either.

“—then when you came attim with th’ook and— Whoa whoa whoa!” Very abruptly, Fawkes is in front of him, arms (well, arm and a half) outspread.

“Outta me way.”

Fawkes's only answer is a manic grin, then some more fiddling with his detonator. Then the ground behind him erupts in a spray of rust-coloured sand.

“Right,” he announces when the dust has, quite literally, settled (mostly across his shoulders and hair). “Carry on then.”

“Get rid of’m,” Hog says, through clenched teeth. “ _All_  of’m.”

“Re-ee-elax, tiny. That's the last of— Oh, no. Wait a tic!” And he's darting off.

Hog just sighs, and goes back to the clean-up.  _Carefully_.

The bodies get scattered for the scavengers, the guns and wrecked cars dragged ‘round back. Hog’s halfway through hauling the ute when it occurs to him Fawkes just saved his life, or at least limb. Not with Gribbon’s people—the was the damn kid’s fault to begin with—but with the mines. Hog was about to walk right across them. And he'd kinda been assuming the whole “bodyguard” gig had been a spur-of-the-moment thing to get away from Gribbon, but . . .

But Hog could be dead right now, or at least pissed off, and Fawkes could be halfway across the Territory. But the kid hadn't even tried.

Huh.

Fawkes’s arm has been knocked about and half-buried in the dirt. But it looks mostly intact when Hog drags it out. He dusts it off, studying the construction as he walks back to the house. It’s a lot more complex close-up than the heap of junk it looks like from a distance; not far from the tech a different version of Mako Rutledge used to pull off omnics, another lifetime ago. Huh.

The kid is back on the porch when Hog finds him, hunched over a rough-stitched roo-skin satchel, portioning the contents into two equal piles.

“Hey.”

Fawkes startles, turning wide-eyed and too quickly. The guilt evaporates into joy, however, when he sees what Hog is holding. “Me arm!”

Hog hands it over, and has to admit there's something . . . endearing in the enthusiasm Fawkes shows in reattaching it. The arm shudders to life as the nerve-jacks kick in, twitching alarmingly.

“Needs a bit of a service, ‘ay?” Fawkes says, rolling the fingers experimentally. “But she'll be right for now, ahahahaha!” Then, with barely a breath: “‘Ey, Hoggie. ‘Ere you go. Fifty-fifty, just like we agreed, right?”

Fawkes is gesturing towards the piles, just mounds of undifferentiated shadow through the lenses of Hog’s mask.

“‘Ere,” Fawkes says. He picks something off the pile, holding it out, expression open and earnest and so incredibly  _young_. After a moment, Hog takes the item, raising it in front of his mask’s lens and—

Oh. Shit.

Roadhog’s heard about Fawkes's “treasure”, because so has the entire bloody Outback. Like at least half the population—the less credulous half—he’d assumed it be a pile of self-aggrandising bullshit. Tall yarns from a dumb kid with enough tickets on himself to earn a bounty for his trouble.

Except for what Hog’s currently got between his fingers: a genuine, grade-A omnic chip.

Shit. Suddenly the kid’s arm makes sense. If he has access to components like these.

“There's more,” Fawkes blurts, into the silence. “Can't carry it all at once, is all. Euhuhuhuhu . . .” Eyes darting side-to-side, like it's suddenly just occurred to him what a stupid thing that was to admit.

“First rule,” Hog says. “No—”

“‘Ay! I'm the boss! I make the—”

“ _First_  rule: no more blabbin’ ‘bout this shit.” Hog gestures towards the piles of components, and Fawkes has the audacity to  _pout_.

“‘Snot ‘shit’! This is quality parts I'll have you—”

“That's why you can't keep blabbin’ ‘bout it, y’fuckin’ ratbag!” Hog snaps, slamming his empty fist against the verandah post, hard enough to crack it. “Give y’self a fuckin’ break. Shut y’hole long enough and the dropkicks from the Junk might start t’leave y’alone.”

“Lettem try! I got you now,  _bodyguard_. Do y’fuckin’ job!”

“That’s what’m fuckin’  _doin_ ’!”

Fawkes opens his mouth like he's about to argue, then shuts it with a scowl almost as fast. “Oh,” he says, after a moment. “Right. Er . . . yeah, right. Okay.” He folds his lips between his teeth and mimes zipping his mouth.

Hog sighs, once more regretting the long series of terrible life choices that have lead him to this moment.

There's an old esky near the door, doing nothing whatsoever for the tinnies inside. Hog pulls out the latter and takes the former, figuring it'll be good enough to hold the pile of omnic shit until he can either offload or use it. The parts—not just chips, but tiny servos and even more esoteric things—are new, and clean as anything ever is out here. As different to the fried-out repurposed shit that makes up half of Junkertown as a newborn calf is to a maggot-riddled carcass. And if there's more . . .

Shit. No wonder everyone wants a piece of the kid.

“Hey, er. Hoggie?”

“ _Road_ hog.”

“Right, right. So, Roadie . . . if we're bein’ all mum to the drongos in Junkert’n now . . . where we gonna get the loot from?”

Roadhog scowls, turning to face Fawkes in confusion. “What?”

“‘S just . . . they was the best source’a loot, wasn’t they? I mean, at first it was a bit rough. But blow a dozen, two dozen, high enough t’hit Tassie on the way down, and it's only the dumb ones what keep comin’, right? And them’s easy pickin’s. Loo-krat-tif, as the suits say.”

“ . . .  _what_?”

Fawkes fidgets, twirling his fingers and not meeting Hog’s eyes. “I mean, ‘kaa-ay-shun-alee some cunt gets the idea to hire a pruh-fesh-nahl like y’self, right? But . . . well.” And here Fawkes does look up, grinning the biggest goddamn shit-eating grin Roadhog has ever seen. “Tha’s why I got you now, don't I? The best’a the best, one man apocalypse’n all. So no worries, right? Ahahahahah!”

And Hog just stares, and stares some more, and wonders just how badly he's been played.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... okay, I lied. _This_ is the most Australian thing I've ever written (holy shit).


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Nothing sweet as winning when you always got to start last_   
>  _You Jar-Jar big mistake, cokeheads lick the plate_   
>  _Wack rappers lick the sack, government don’t give it back_   
>  _So we gon’[take it all while we can](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgU6a12saYM)_

Junkrat still has them riding east, following the endless line of the old Plenty Highway. It was a treacherous, busted-up piece of shit even before the core blew, and now it's nigh-impassible; just a choking cloud of bulldust torn up by the bike, the road itself more pothole than surface.

Rat spends the days curled up asleep in the sidecar, hidden from the dust and sun beneath a tarp. Roadhog drives, mask keeping the radioactive haze from his lungs and eyes, and sleeps at night while Rat keeps watch. It's their routine, the one that's done them well this last year, once they trusted each other enough to try it.

On the second day, they hit the ruins of what had once been Tarlton Downs Station. The place has been settled and lost and settled and lost so many times over the last few years that it almost looks like a Junkertown in miniature; haphazard, beat-up buildings piled on top of the skeleton of the original station’s ruins.

Still, this is where Rat has decided they're heading, and so Hog pulls the bike into the broken little circle of sheds and lean-tos and kills the engine. There was nothing subtle about their approach, so he spends a few minutes casing the joint, gun and hook in hand. When he's satisfied the place is clear, he heads back to the bike, to find Rat already awake, sitting up and yawning, afternoon sun catching on the gold in his snaggletoothed mouth.

Hog’s heart gives another one of its skipping, potentially deadly flutters at the sight, and before he can stop himself he's reaching out to ruffle the scraggly remains of the kid’s hair.

Rat mumbles something offensive at the contact, swatting at Hog with the stump of his right arm, but he also collapses against Hog’s stomach, nuzzling sleepily against the tattoo like he intends to stay.

“We ‘ere?” comes the mumbled question, felt through Hog’s skin more than heard.

“Yeah.”

Rat heaves a huge sigh, and Hog doesn't bother to hide a smile a the kid's antics. Rat never was a morning person, even when “morning” is three in the afternoon.

“C’mon,” Hog says, rubbing at Rat’s shoulder and the scars of his severed arm. “Getcha outta the sun.”

Rat just gives a moan, twisting his torso to give Hog better access to his back. His skin is filthy—sweat and grease and soot and dust—and the cords of his muscles are strung to tighter than the cables on Sydney Harbor. Hog patiently kneads out what knots he can, while Rat moans like a two-bob whore and uses his hand to jack himself, unashamed and unselfconscious, inside the sidecar.Between Hog’s hands and his own he doesn't last long, blowing his load with one final moan half-bitten into Roadhog’s belly.

Afterwards, he slumps back into the sidecar, limbs sprawled over the edges and lips split into a huge, self-satisfied grin. “Y’r the best bodyguard in the Outback, y’know that, Hoggie?” When his eyes open, the raw emotion forces Hog to turn away.

“Yeah,” he snorts, leaning over to fish Rat’s arm from the bottom of the sidecar. “I know.”

He hands Rat the arm, and the kid gets to work strapping both it and his leg back in place. It's better when he gets to sleep without them on. Back in the old days—before Hog, and for a little while after—he used to alternate which he'd remove.  _A runnin’ night or a fightin’ night,_  he'd explained it as, grinning his maniac’s grin. Hog hadn't thought much about it, until the first time he'd caught Rat folded double in agony, tears coursing down his cheeks over agony in a limb he no longer had.

 _‘S stupid,_  he'd bit out.  _‘S gone. I know it's gone. So why does it still fuckin’ hurt?_

 _Phantom limb,_  Hog had said, because apparently no one else had bothered.  _‘S normal._

Rat’s pain comes and goes with how well he's sleeping and how wired he is when he's awake, which is to say, is excruciating almost all of the time. Hog does what he can, telling himself it's better for business if his boss is up and functioning and, more importantly, not self-medicating on the rough-cut junk that makes up most of the Outback’s drugs, medicinal or no.

They make camp in the shot-up shell of a building that's little more than some rusted sheets of Colorbond propped against one another. Hog leaves Rat to sort out a fire—hottest part of the day or not, it’s always Rat’s job to sort out the fire—while he starts pacing around the ruins of the station, looking for food or water or loot or all three.

Turns out there's an old capped bore round the back of the buildings, and Hog moves in to check it out. They aren't low on water but, between themselves and the bike, they could always do with more. Or a bath, depending on exactly what Hog can get out of the pump.

The suspiciously well-maintained, rust-free, recently oiled pump.

“Fuck.”

Hog spins, scrap gun raised, to find himself with a face-full of weapons. Shotguns and spears, both modern and old, clutched by no fewer than twenty Aboriginal men, painted and scowling. Hog is too close to the leaders for the scrap gun’s scatter to take out more than two or three, and while it  _will_  take them out—probably, assuming the shields they're holding really are just wood—it'll give the others time to react. Hog can survive a lot, but a career as a spit roast wasn't part of today’s agenda.

“Put down the gun, bigfella,” says a man to Hog’s left. “Then get back on your bike and walk away.”

“Wouldn't be walking on the bike.” Hog curses himself as soon as he says it. It isn’t something the Roadhog of a year ago, or even six months, would’ve said. Seems Rat is rubbing off on him in more ways then one.

“Oh, a comedian,” says the talker, apparently as impressed with Hog as Hog is with himself. “Regular fuckin’ Porky Pig, you are.”

If he keeps them talking, Hog thinks, Rat might overhear. Then the kid can either leg it or hide or blow some shit up as a distraction or—

“‘Ey, you drongos. ‘E’s with me.”

—or stand on top of a nearby shed like a bleedin’ orange target, lips flappin’ like a flyscreen in a dust storm. Fuck!

“That right?” Mr. Talker says to Hog. “He your mob?”

“Never seen ‘im before in m’life.”

“Hoggie! How could you? I thought we was mates!”

And then, of all things, Mr. Talker says:

“Sorry, Jamie. Looks like this one’s got too much sense to be about with the likes of you, eh?”

“Go stick a clapstick up y’r a’se, Biggsy, y’funny cunt.”

The talker, “Biggsy”, just laughs. But he gestures, and the other men begin to lower their weapons. “Sorry ‘bout the welcome,” he says to Hog. “But didn’t know whatcha intentions were with me fine friend Mister Fawkes over there.”

Hog re-holsters his own gun with a shrug. “Bodyguard,” he says, earning another laugh.

“Well,” is the reply. “Now I seen fuckin’ everythin’.”

* * *

Roadhog hadn't expected, back in those early days, that the Rat would keep his word on the whole fifty-fifty split thing. Turns out, he'd been right. Just not in the way he'd assumed.

“‘Ey, Hoggie. You use this stuff, right?”

Three months of being the mad kid’s “bodyguard” had turned out, Hog has to admit, to be both the most frustrating and the most enjoyable job he's had in years. Junkrat is a magnet for trouble and an agent of mayhem, and his ridiculous non-plan of, in effect, letting his scores come to him works remarkable well.

Hog knows—or, rather, knew—the latest one to try her luck; a self-appointed hardass by the name of Madds Marcy, currently lying in at least half a dozen chunks in the dust, intermingled with the mince-meat of her former crew. Madds was all right, far as bounty hunters went, and they'd even had a nice little chat about how it wasn't personal, back when Madds had been aiming her gun at Hog’s head, thinking she’d got him.

It hadn't been personal for Junkrat, either, when he'd blown the mine Madds had been standing on. One of his weird launcher types, it’d thrown Madds high enough for Hog to lunge for his gun and blow her full of scrap on the way down, then roll out of the way in time for Rat’s bombs to finish her off.

The kid might be a twitchy little shit with the voice of a cockatoo and the memory of a cane toad, but he sure can hold his own in a scrap. Pun intended because he also, true to his name, has a nose for hunting treasure, which is how he's ended up with a sack filled with yellow canisters.

“Yeah,” says Hog, eyeing the biotics. It's the consumer-grade version of the stuff Hog uses; the stuff Rat once called “Hogdrogen” and now Hog can't think of as anything else. He’ll huff the kiddie edition if he has to, but would rather take it home, distill it, and mix it with his own secret herbs and spices.

“Neato!” announces Rat, and tosses Hog the sack.

It's only later, when they're portioning out the rest of the loot, that Hog realizes Rat’s forgotten about the biotics. Kid is crouched over bullets and chits, painstakingly counting everything equal, and suddenly the sack of biotics hangs heavy at his waist.  _Fifty-fifty,_ says a voice in his head, at the same time as another whispers,  _Idiot’s already forgotten about it. Just shut your hole and consider it a bonus._

Hog shifts, gun slung across his shoulder as he scans the horizon.  _Fifty-fifty,_  whispers the first voice again.  _It's the deal. Kid hasn't tried to screw you yet._

Roadhog is a lot of things, some he's proud of, some he's not. But the one thing he's always considered himself is a man who honors his word. He's had plenty of deals go bad, plenty of people try their luck at cheating him. But he's never been the one who bailed first. Hog might be a man of few lines—again, pun intended—but that's one he will not cross.

Which is why he sighs, unhooks the sack, and says:

“Boss. Y’forgot about this.”

Rat looks up at the sack, squinting and pouting like he's just hit the trick question in the exam. Just as Hog’s about to prompt him the memory clicks, and Rat exclaims, “Oh, right. For yer ‘Ogdrogen.” Then beams deliriously, like a schoolkid expecting praise.

Hog just shuffs, feeling unfathomably old. “Fifty-fifty,” he says. “Remember?”

Rat scowls, glancing between Hog and the little piles of loot he's painstakingly counting. “Ye-ee-eah . . . I thought— Did I count it wrong?” He starts re-counting the bullets, making little divots in the dust where he can group up piles of five.

“No, Boss . . .” Hog crouches, hand shooting out to grab a thin wrist. Rat startles at the contact, and when he pulls away Hog doesn't try and stop him. Instead, he hands back the sack. Or tries to. “Count these, too.”

When nervous, Junkrat really does live up to his name; all twitchy, darting movements, eyes constantly scanning for traps or danger or worse. “No, but— Fifty-fifty loot ‘n’ treasure, right? That was the deal?”

Now it's Roadhog’s turn to scowl, frustration fast catching up to honesty in the Emotions Olympics. Outside the mask, where Rat can see, he just nods.

“Right, right.” Rat nods, almost to himself. “Thought so. Knew I didn't forget. Not that. Too important to forget that—”

“Boss . . . The biotics?”

“Supplies!” Rat blurts, too abruptly. “The Deal was fer loot ‘n’ treasure but that”—he gestures to the sack—”that's  _supplies_. Can't do a heist without supplies, right? You get the gas, I get the boom, then the loot is fifty-fifty. Euhuhuhuhu!”

And it . . . makes sense, Hog thinks. At least the kind of mad, rad-fried sense of someone like Junkrat.

“Take the bullets, then,” Hog hears himself saying.

“Eh?”

“Y’make bombs from the powder, yeah?”

“Yeah, but . . . can make bombs from lotsa stuff, ahahaha!”

But Rat’s eyes are still darting around like a roo on PCP, and the kid is twitching like he expects a punch at any moment. Probably from experience. Lotta people out there’d take advantage of a philosophy like that. Advantage or offense.

But Hog . . . Hog just pushes the pile of bullets towards his boss. “Supplies,” he says. “We'll split what you don't need. Can do the same with the biotics, all right?” Fuck knows Rat gets his own share of injuries, half of them from his own damn explosives.

Rat blinks, expression oddly blank, like a rebooting computer. Then, just as abruptly, it bursts into a giant, gleaming grin. “Yeah,” Rat says. “Yeah, right. Aces. I knew you'd get it, Hoggie”—absolutely a lie, from the kid’s earlier reaction—”’cause y’r smart, you are.” Rat taps at his temple with a metal finger, leaving bloody, sooty prints dotted along the wild coastline of his islands of hair.

Roadhog just sighs, and wonders how long it'll take until he regrets this new addition to his already tenuous “contract” of employment.

Turns out, there are quite a lot of things Junkrat considers “supplies” rather than loot. As well as biotics and, now, gunpowder and explosives, they include: food, water, tires, oil, solar cells, batteries, bandages and non-biotic medical supplies, lengths of chain, nails and screws, tools, wire, camping supplies, and clothing (or “costumes”, in Rat-speak). Loot, meanwhile, is: drugs, booze, omnic parts, guns and “single purpose” weapons, vehicles, musical instruments, foreign tech, porn and other miscellaneous entertainment items, plush toys, and, of course, cash and cash-adjacent items, e.g. jewelry, gems, and gold.

Rat’s calculations for what goes where and to whom is esoteric and, to Hog, completely impenetrable but not, he has to admit, in a way that makes him feel he's being cheated. Which is novel in-and-of itself. In particular, Rat makes no complaints about keeping the bike maintained, regardless of component or expense, nor about the distribution of food and water. Roadhog is under no illusions he's one of the Outback's more svelte residents—it is, after all, kinda His Thing—and he's been burnt before working long-term with others who’ve tried to trade off food “allowances” for cash.

Then again, Rat is much better at sourcing food from the land than most junkers Hog’s met; the kid will happily scrounge for quandong and bush tomatoes, and knows how to dig for yams and witchetty grubs. He's too twitchy and impatient to grind seeds for flour—and they've lost more than one harvest thanks to Rat’s ongoing quest to apply explosives to the milling process—but it's obvious he knows what he's seeing when he watches Hog prepare pigweed and mulga. Hog wonders, more than once, where the kid grew up. Most of the food in Junkertown is either hauled in from the coast—some smuggled, some as “foreign aid”—or cultivated shit grown on the hardscrabble farms that ring the periphery. Sixty thousand years people have been living off the land in the red desert, but if there's one thing the region’s locals hate more than omnics it's junkers, and they stopped sharing what they knew twenty years ago. Maybe hoping the radiation and the starvation would clean out what politicians and the courts never would.

Fat fucking chance.

So Hog wonders, but doesn't ask. Because this is Outback. Once upon a time, in another life, Mako Rutledge heard someone say that the past was another country. In the Outback, that country died the moment Canberra granted the land to Omnica, and Mako Rutledge died the moment the core blew. Now, there's just dust and rads and Roadhog, who wouldn't ask anything of anyone he wouldn't answer himself. So he leaves the kid’s past alone, lets Junkrat keep to himself what he will, because fuck knows he'll blather about any other thing.

Still. Sometimes, when the night is cold and the sky is clear, and Rat is a warm firm presence against’s his back, Hog . . . wonders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> True story: the only reason this is getting posted in chapters is so I can inflict music on you.
> 
> Also: I have Complicated Feelings about the _Mad Max_ -inspired legacy of what, in particular, white outsiders perceive as the "Australian Outback" (e.g. barren, white, male, individualist). But, yanno. So did _Fury Road_ , if you were paying attention, so... yeah. About that. :finger guns:


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I really need you all to know how difficult it is, as an Australian, to deal with The Ass/Arse Dilemma. Australian English mostly leans towards British English spellings, which means the tendency is to write "arse" in written media. Except the Australian _accent_ is non-rhotic, which means we don't pronounce the "r" sound if it falls between a vowel and consonant, 1 meaning we pronounce "arse" more like "ass" (or, more rightly, "a'se"). Except when you see "arse" written you kinda want to say it in your head in The British Way (i.e. pronouncing the R), which makes you sound like a wanker. But you don't wanna write it "ass", either, because it makes you look like a Yank.
> 
> There is no good solution to this problem and I just want everyone to understand my pain.
> 
> Also: I totally meant to have this fic finished by [Australia Day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ9qeX4gUeo) but, like, obviously that didn't happen so whatever. Not much more to go.
> 
> 1 This is also (one of the many reasons) why most "Australian" "accents" attempted by Americans (yeah, boys, I'm _looking at you_ ) sound weird; most US accents are rhotic, which is also why youse can't say words like "Melbourne" right. themoreyouknow.gif

Mako Rutledge first ran into what would one day become the Ghost Boys during his days in the ALF. A loose coalition of Indigenous men, from all corners of the country, they weren’t quite ALF—weren’t quite ready to link arms and sing kumbaya with the colonizers and their apologists—but they had the same goals, and the same grievance, albeit writ in two-hundred-year-high letters that cast a shadow of sixty thousand. Mako had always gotten along with them, sometimes more than his fellow members of the ALF, and they’d been the ones to teach him the ways to survive in the scorching flat red of the desert.

After the Crisis, after the core, the Boys who could had gone back to their people, and the others had gone walkabout to try and escape or repent the shame. About five years back, Roadhog had started to hear rumors of their return; bands of armed and organized men running junkers and squatters out of sacred sites and off traditional lands. Clearing them out had been one of the few sorts of jobs he’d never taken, and had usually shot or strung up anyone who asked, just on principle.

The new Ghosts were into other things, as well. Specifically, warring for control of the Outback’s drug trade.

“If we dealin’ out, they aren’t dealin’ in,” is how it’s explained by Biggs “Biggsy” Nash, once the weapons are down and the smiles are up. “No one out ‘ere cryin’ over O.D.’d junkers. No offense, brother ‘ey?”

Roadhog, who’s never considered himself part of that group, just shrugs.

Biggs does the talking, but Scrip is the moneyman. He’s a mountainous bastard, not quite Hog-sized but close, with a tiny pair of wire frames perched on the end of his nose. He’s currently sitting on a tarp with Junkrat, sifting through the drugs they picked up from Maddox Red. Scrip has an offsider, Doc Bones, who’s in charge of the little handheld spectrometer used to assess the chemical composition of each package. From Rat’s excited chatter and the Doc’s whistling, they’ve managed to luck into some A-grade shit. Something that does not escape Biggs’s notice.

“Which unlucky S.O.B. got blown up for this lot?”

“Maddox Red,” Hog says, because there doesn’t seem a point to being coy. Biggs had hugged Rat like a brother, once the kid had gotten down off the roof, and the pair have obviously done business before.

Biggs whistles at the mention of Red’s name. “No loss on that one. Him’n Jamie got history.”

“Yeah. Figured.”

“That one”—he means Red—”he ran mule for Merv Bland.”

“Never heard of ‘im.”

“Keep it that way, eh? And stay outta Darwin while you’re at it.”

“Yeah. All right.” Hog wasn’t planning a holiday to start with, but he knows a friendly warning when he hears one.

“So how long you been on this ‘bodyguard’ gig?”

Hog shrugs. “Year, maybe?”

Biggs whistles, laughing. “Then you must have the patience of a saint, brother—”

“‘Ay! I ‘eard that!”

Biggs just waves off Rat’s outrage with another laugh. “‘E’s a mad cunt but ‘e’s all right, is Jamie. Do ‘im straight and he’ll return the favor. Though suppose you’ve worked that out y’self, if it’s been a year.”

Hog nods. Rat’s a big-mouthed lunatic who drives Hog crazy, but he’s straight with the deal and, honestly, Hog loves the mayhem. “Turns out, better work blowin’ junker cunts to mince-meat than wipin’ the Queen’s a’se and cleanin’ up her shit.” He thinks for a moment. “Plus, kid gives ripper head.”

Biggs laughs again, and Roadhog gets the sneaking suspicion he’s starting to like the guy. He seems like an easy guy to like, when he’s not at the other end of a spear. “Right. Previous comment re. ‘doin’ ‘im straight’ rescinded, eh?”

Hog just smirks, hidden safe behind the mask.

By now, Scrip has started counting out cash and placing it in front of Junkrat. It is cash, too; real-deal Aussie dollars, mixed in with rough chunks of opal and gold and garnet. Figures the Ghost Boys wouldn’t have much use for Junkertown chits themselves, but Hog’s still surprised to see Scrip pull out the good stuff for Rat.

“Keep the shit-chits for the junker mules,” Biggs says, maybe sensing Hog’s attention. “But Jamie, he don’t get the Bullshit Tax.” Because he deals straight, is the implication; doesn’t try and cheat the Boys with cut goods or haggle too much on the price.

“And the rest?” Scrip is saying, nodding to the second pack.

“Oh, right. That’s Hoggie’s,” Rat says. Then, louder, at Roadhog: “‘Ey, Hoggie. Y’want in on this?”

Hog pushes forward from the shed he’d been leaning on, walking over to crouch down between Rat and Scrip.

“—same shit,” Rat is explaining. “Everythin’s fifty-fifty, right?”

“Same prices if you want in,” is Scrip’s assessment. He’s holding a hardlight tablet and hands it over when Hog gestures; it has the itemized inventory of Rat’s haul, by drug and weight and purity, plus the cash value equivalents and commodity pricing for the gold and gemstones.

The money isn’t what they could get either dealing themselves or if they sold to one of the brokers in Junkertown, but it’s transferable in a way chits aren’t and the transaction wouldn’t, as Biggs put it, incur the “Bullshit Tax”.

“Yeah,” says Hog, because it really is a no-brainer. “I’m in.”

He holds back a baggie of uppers for days when the road is long and sleep a luxury, but hands the rest over. Doc tests and weighs everything, Scrip notes it all down and counts out the resulting payment. In the end, Hog’s side of the “half” works out about a hundred short of Rat’s, but Rat just giggles and tucks a fifty into Hog’s waistband with a leer and a, “Buy y’self somethin’ pur-rr-rdy, lil’ girl” growled in an absolutely atrocious American accent.

Hog thumps him one in return, but keeps the money, and Rat just laughs and laughs and laughs.

* * *

Afterwards, there’s food and drink and gossip and a joint passed around the fire. Most of Biggs’s Boys stay sober and so does Hog, but Rat and Biggs and the Doc and a few others aren’t averse to a light high. (“Medicinal,” the Doc calls it. “Pure Queensland bud. Won’t get better.”) Hog does drink a single beer and eat some of the kangaroo, once it’s pulled from the fire. When he lifts his mask up to reveal his mouth, every one of the Boys turns away until he’s done, and nothing more on the subject is said.

As the sun goes down, the instruments come out. A skinny kid pulls out a didgeridoo and some clapsticks, Scrip produces a guitar. And Rat, surprisingly, races back to the bike and returns with a battered old harmonica Hog’s never seen before. He’s dubious when the kid first blows into it, creating a screeching discordant sound accompanied by a spray of “dust” that combusts into gunpowder sparks when it hits the fire. Except when the rhythm picks up and Rat gets into his groove, it turns out the kid really can play. And well, too. Roadhog’s entire musical career can be encompassed by a brief stint on the tuba in the Year Five-Six school band; an accomplishment he was immensely excited about at the time and, in retrospect, was utterly ratshit at. He could read a score and press the required keys, sure, but he never  _felt_  the music in the way Rat seems to, howling along on his harmonica to whatever Scrip is strumming; some songs Hog recognizes, most he doesn’t, and the beats and bridges flow into each other so smoothly Hog just leans his head back against the rough wall of a shed, eyes falling closed and throat humming along when he knows the words.

It’s only when the group gets to a raucous rendition of “Blackfella/Whitefella” that Hog decides its time to bail. It’s an old song, one Mako hasn’t heard since the core and one Roadhog’s never known and never will. He’s surprised Rat does, but the kid’s happily screaming the chorus alongside Biggs and Scrip and the others. Shit. That’s . . . Hog doesn’t know what to think about that, so thinks nothing, and turns away.

Biggs has people watching the desert, and while Hog doesn’t quite trust them—in the same way he doesn’t quite trust anyone, save maybe Rat (sometimes)—but it’s enough that he scrounges around until he finds an old metal tub in one of the sheds. The thing looks well-used, holes patched with smooth resin, and Hog dumps it near the bore and starts filling it up. The thing’s not big enough for Hog to sit in, but it’ll do for a wash, and if he’s lucky, he might be able to throw Rat in while he’s at it.

He has a towel and a toiletries bag in the bike, because living in the desert doesn’t actually mean living in a filthy cesspit, despite what half of Junkertown seems to think. The soap is pumice and citrus oil, and Hog has a huge haul of it back home, traded in payment for taking out the maker’s arsehole of an ex. For his hair, he has a tea tree and baking soda scrub he makes himself based on something one of Mako’s exes taught him, back in another lifetime, and every time he uses it he wonders if “Outback hipster” is a thing. On the coast, probably. Fuckin’ avo-eating latte junkies.

Hog strips off his vest and mask and gauntlet with a sigh, leaving his gear in a heavy pile in the dust. It all needs cleaning and oiling as well, but one thing at a time.

The pump water is cool when Hog plunges his hands into it, working the rough soap into a good lather first over his face and neck, then chest and pits, then arms and hands. He’s just coming up from the tub after doing his hair—silver strands hanging long and shaggy over his stubbled cheeks—when he notices bright amber eyes watching him from the dark.

“Don’t mind me, mate,” Rat says, teeth gleaming. “Just enjoyin’ the show.”

Hog shrugs. “Fair’s fair,” he says. “You were killin’ it earlier. Didn’t know you played the harmonica.”

“A bit,” Rat lies, laughing nervously for no reason Hog can see. “That’n piana. Bit’a shit guitar, too, but”—he holds up his right hand and wriggles the fingers—”these fuck with the sound, ‘ey.”

“Huh.” Hog goes back to his washing, trying not to think about where a Junkertown brat would’ve learnt all that.

After a moment, he hears the sounds of the kid ditching his own gear and clothes and limbs, and manages to pull back just in time as Rat drops backwards into the tub.

He’s not quite fast enough to avoid getting soaked with the splash, so dunks Rat’s head beneath the surface in revenge. Even underwater, Rat’s laughing, bubbles foaming the surface of the tub as he thrashes and whacks at Hog with the stump of his arm.

“Ratbag,” Hog gripes, when Rat breaks the surface again, and gets a spat out stream of bathwater in his face for his efforts. That warrants another dunking, and by the time Rat is signaling  _peace_  they’re both well and truly sopping.

Afterwards, they wash each other. Rat does Hog’s back, bony elbow digging in to work out all the knots along Hog’s spine. It is, honestly, more than enough to make up for the extended scrubbing it takes to clean the ash and grease off Rat’s face and torso in turn. (“Junkert’n sunscreen,” Rat had said, months ago now. “Slip slop slap, Hoggie! Ahahahaha!”) As usual, Rat goes limp in Roadhog’s hands, eyes rolling back in bliss as he enjoys the manhandling, cherry-red cockhead bobbing in the bathwater.

Hog works the kid over nice and thorough, fingers just a touch too heavy for gentle, slapping Rat’s hand away every time he tries to reach for himself. Technically, they’re out in the open but Biggs’s people are giving them space, and while Hog doesn’t have much in the way of shame—at least not that kind—he’d rather haul Rat back to a shed and fuck him proper than have something quick and public.

Which is why, when they’re both more-or-less clean, he bundles the still-limp Rat up in the towel, tossing the kid over his shoulder as he gathers up their discarded gear. He’d staked out one of the buildings earlier by virtue of parking his bike outside it, and kicks his way in through the door to find Rat’s already unrolled their swag in a corner between a wall and a broken dresser.

Hog dumps Rat onto the swag then puts their stuff down more carefully (Rat bounces, but his gear tends to explode). Then he’s taking off his belt and kicking off his boots and dropping to his knees between the kid’s wide-open thighs.

“Gonna fuckya,” Hog says, and the announcement makes Rat’s eyes sparkle. “Butcha gonna shut up while I do.”

“Aw, Hoggie you know I—”

But Roadhog is serious, and proves it by slamming a hand over Rat’s mouth and nose. He presses down just hard enough for the cartilage to creak and to feel the uneven jag of the kid’s teeth beneath his lips. Rat’s eyes bug but it’s with exhilaration, not fear, and his squirming is from anticipation, not an attempt to get away. Hog might like it rough sometimes, but he’s never understood fucking into someone that didn’t want it just as bad and, lucky for him, Rat’s both incessantly horny and hot for being pushed around.

There’s lube tucked away in the swag, and Hog manages to find it with only his free hand. At one point, Rat gives him two distinct taps on the thigh, which is his sign to let up on the air a little. He does, feeling the gasping breath beneath his left palm, while he fucks about with the lube with his right.

It takes Rat roughly three seconds to recover enough to start babbling again, or at least try to, because he’s nothing if not a little shit. Hog shuts him up by pressing down again which, if the throbbing of Rat’s cock is anything to go by, is exactly what the manipulative little ratbag was after.

Hog shifts forward, hooking Rat’s leg over the arm that’s holding him down, the stump of the other propped against Hog’s belly. Rat’s skin is clean for once, still damp from the bath, scent a mix of citrus and tea tree and the musk of his own sex. It smells good, and Hog rolls forward and closer to it, burying his nose against Rat’s neck as his bulk presses Rat heavy into the swag.

Another two taps makes Hog relent, and this time he feels a wheezed “Roadie . . .” against his palm. But the kid’s eyes are still rolled-back and half-lidded, his hips rocking desperately into nothing, so Hog takes his lubed-up fingers and presses them hard into the puckered flesh of the kid’s arse. Not breaching the ring of muscle, just teasing, enough to have Rat squirming for more and whining something chronic beneath Hog’s other hand. A muffled litany of  _please_  and  _more_  and  _harder_  and  _fuck me Roadie, just fuckin’ raw me_  because, well. It’s Junkrat, and the kid’s got a mouth on him in more ways than one.

Eventually Hog relents, pushing a thick finger into slick wet heat, more from the hot pressure in his own cock than from anything of Rat’s pleading. (Although . . .maybe a little. Even if it’s nothing he’d ever admit to.)

Rat’s muscles flex around the digit, relaxing and contracting, like they’re trying to suck more and more inside. Kid is a fucking champion at taking it up the arse, and Hog soon works in another finger, even as Rat is twisting around, trying to get his own digits in there as well.

“So fuckin’ hungry for it,” Hog growls, voice so deep to be almost sub-audible. Rat’s eyes snap back and go wide at the sound, although don’t lose their glassy, doped-up sheen. “Get my whole fuckin’ fist up you one day. Open you up wider than that goddamn mouth of yours. So wide you’ll be gapin’ for weeks.”

Rat’s only response to this is an enthusiastic groan, and what would probably be a nod, if not for Hog’s hand still over half his face.

“Or maybe,” Hog continues, “I’ll just spear y’on m’cock an’ keep y’ there. Chain y’on like a fuckin’ belt and wear y’round, pump y’fulla cum whenever I want, ’til y’r skinny guts’re bloated with it.”

_That_  idea gets groan so emphatic it makes Rat’s whole body shiver, and Hog can’t help but chuckle.

Honestly, the thought of wearing Rat around like some kind of permanent, living flashlight is doing it for Hog, as well, and he’s lifting his hand from Rat’s face to pop open his fly and pull out his dick. It’s good to be freed, bouncing up with a heavy  _thwap_  against the underside of his belly, and Hog gives it a good few hard strokes, groaning low from the feel.

“Aw, fuck, yeah, Hoggie. Y’such a big cunt. Give it to m—”

“I said shuddup.” Hog grunts in annoyance, letting go of his dick and using the hand to push Rat back against the swag, muffling any further comments. His palm must smell musky from his own pre, because he feels Rat inhale deeply, eyes rolling back in bliss as the muscles in his arse clench hungry around Hog’s other hand.

Hog would, of course, much rather they clench around his dick. He has to take his fingers out to lube up again—Rat’s eyes are, to borrow a phrase, too big for his arsehole, and Hog doesn’t actually want to tear the kid open—and Rat whines at the loss, squirming around to try and stick as much of his own hand up there in replacement.

When Hog lines his dick up, though, those fingers quickly switch to tugging at the shaft, trying to drag him in. Rat’s leg gets in one the game as well, trying to pull at Hog’s shoulder, urging him closer.

“Greedy little slut,” Hog growls, then pushes in.

Rat’s spine goes taught, arching up off the ground. Or rather it tries to, because Hog’s shifting his weight forward, crushing Rat into the thin padding of the swag. All of Rat’s breath leaves him in a rush, and Hog shifts his hand so it’s cupping the kid’s head rather than cutting off his air. Rat’s pretty out of it, from his rolled-back eyes and short, shallow breath, but his arse is hot and tight and his hips keep trying to rock beneath Hog’s, even now.

Hog grunts, bracing himself against the floor with his free hand, pushing forward as he starts to rut in earnest. Fuck, he loves this. Rat is all bone and sinew on the outside and warm silk within, thighs splayed painfully wide around Hog’s waist. His heel is digging into he small of Hog’s back, moving with jerky contractions in time with Hog’s thrusts—urging him faster or harder or both—while the fingers of his hand grab onto the fat on Hog’s side, doing the same. Hog just lowers his head, growling as catches Rat’s mouth in something that’s more bite than kiss. Rat’s lips catch on the tusks and it makes the kid shivery with lust; honestly not the reaction Hog was thinking of when he had them put in, way back, but shit. He’ll take it.

When Hog changes positions, it’s sudden; rolling himself back onto his knees, manhandling Rat’s limp body like it’s nothing. The kid is bowed back across Hog’s thighs, his shoulders still on the swag, cheeks flushed and lips plump, freckles obvious even in the gloom. He’s not pretty, exactly, because nothing out here is, but . . . there is  _something_ , and Hog takes a moment to appreciate it, big hand running down Rat’s long neck and the muscles of his heaving chest, feeling for the heartbeat that runs strong beneath.

When his hand reaches Rat’s belly, he pauses. Even with the new angle, Hog doesn’t think he can  _actually_  feel his own dick as it pushes up into the kid’s guts, but that doesn’t stop him from trying—pressing hard and thrusting deep—and it doesn’t take long from there for the heat and pressure to really build beneath his own gut.

When Hog comes it’s with a deep and heavy grunt, spilling his hot load deep into Rat’s willing body. He slumps forward again from the effort, catching himself with a hand against the ground, old heart pounding, sweat slicking his freshly washed skin. It’s a good sweat, though; the clean damp of a good hard root, and Hog just stills for a minute, feeling his spent dick twitching inside Rat’s still-spasming insides, enjoying the hot, musky scent of their sex.

He doesn’t take too long. The kid is still rock hard against his own belly, and coming back to himself enough that his hand is twitching towards his dick, unsure if he’ll be allowed to touch.

He isn’t, so Hog laces his fingers with Rat’s and presses their hands to the ground. Rat whines when Hog pulls out of him, cum spilling from his twitching hole onto the already well-stained swag. Hog watches it for a moment—enjoying his red, puffy handiwork—before he’s shifting down and opening his mouth and swallowing Rat’s dick in one go.

Rat gets exactly two thrusts in before he’s blowing his own load, crying out loud enough to wake the desert, fingers burying themselves in Hog’s hair and tugging tight enough to hurt. Hog sucks him until its over, and then some, until Rat is sobbing and whining and writing to get away, spent and oversensitive.

Hog laughs around the softening cock, but lets it go with a final kiss, and lays Rat’s shuddering, limp body carefully down onto the swag.

Their wet towel is nearby, and Hog uses it to clean Rat’s arse—he gets another half-pained, half-wanton whine as he strokes the looped cotton over Rat’s twitchy, stretched hole—and mop up the excess from the swag.

He tucks away his softening dick, then drops himself down next to Rat. The kid has rolled into a sleepy ball, but he still wriggles closer, and Hog lifts up his arm to let Rat curl up beneath. Fuck knows they don’t need the warmth, but Rat seems to find the weight comforting, and . . . and maybe it’s nice. Just to do this. To cuddle with a partner after a shag. Hog’s body feels heavy and warm, in all the best ways, and Rat is quiet for goddamn once, and he tells himself five minutes. Five minutes to enjoy the afterglow, then he’ll get back up. Keep watch. Oil his gear. All that shit. Five minutes.

He sighs, bone deep and satisfied, shifting to curl closer to the already-snoring Junkrat, eyes sliding closed as darkness closes over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is also called "dirty sex for clean junkers".
> 
> _And I don't care what you say_  
>  _To get me out of the way_  
>  _I got to get my message[through to you, baby](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR2KsFa9ZJQ)._
> 
> (Plus [Special Bonus Track](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxz7CYkQltE).)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... I swear I do know where I'm going with this, and it does have A Plot and An Ending. It just... ended up being like 10k longer than I thought it would be. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Also minor **content warning** that this chapter references sexual assault, though it's not described in detail and it doesn't directly involve either of the boys.

Somehow, five minutes becomes ten hours.

Roadhog wakes with a jolt, consciousness snapping from quiet slumber to sharp alertness in the space of time it takes for the sun to burn a stripe across his outstretched arm.

His fingers are twitching for his gun but, after a moment, he’s faced with the awful realization that he really has just woken up naturally, well-rested from the best night of sleep he’s had in weeks, Junkrat curled around his belly and snoring loud into his chest.

Well . . . shit.

Hog just lies there, oddly uncertain. He can hear noises outside, birdcalls and chatter, but nothing close to the shack. His and Rat’s things are still piled where Hog dropped them last night, and from the way the shadows fall through the slats in the wall, his bike is still parked outside, undisturbed. The feeling of peace and quiet, of  _safety_ , is unsettling and foreign and, now that he’s noticed it, is putting him on edge. It’s not that he was expecting trouble from Biggs’s people except . . . well. Apparently he was still expecting trouble. And in its absence, Hog feels . . . adrift.

Eventually, he extracts himself from Rat, who grumbles something obscene but doesn’t wake, just burrows deeper into the swag. Hog watches him for a moment, rubbing absent-mindedly at the odd murmur in his chest, then grabs the still-damp towel and his discarded toiletries bag. After some consideration, he leaves his mask and walks out the shack, naked to the waist.

He takes a piss round behind the shed then wanders over to the bore. Scrip and two other Boys are chatting nearby when Hog approaches, and they greet him warmly, eyes averted from his face.

“Gonna push off soon,” Scrip says, with a grin. “Just waitin’ for you fellas to drag y’selves outta bed.”

Hog grunts a, “Thanks,” in acknowledgment, the odd, unsettled feeling returning once more. The Boys had stayed so, what? He and Rat would have someone on watch while they slept? That they wouldn’t wake up paranoid they’d been robbed and skipped out on in the night?

Hog reminds himself Rat knows these people. They’re  _friends_ , of all bloody things, and even thinking the word in connection with Junkrat, the Outback’s Most Unwanted, feels strange.

The big tub is still next to the bore, and the water isn’t fresh but it’ll do for a shave. Mako grew a beard circa age twenty to hide his double chin and had it for the rest of his life, but even long stubble is too much beneath the mask, so Roadhog goes clean-shaven. He has an old-fashioned straight razor in his kit, and the ritual around sharpening and lathering and scraping the fuzz off his face is soothing, even if he never much liked the look of the end result.

The Outback, he reminds himself, is no place for vanity.

To clean his teeth, he uses fresh water from the bore, and he’s halfway through scrubbing his left tusk—the implants look intimidating but build up plaque like a motherfucker, and dentists aren’t exactly easy to come by out here—when Rat makes his presence known, flopping down next to Roadhog and bumping boisterously against his side.

“Watch it,” Hog growls, as the impact has him brushing a long stripe of toothpaste across his upper lip.

Rat just blows a raspberry then, in a move that makes Hog wince, dunks his entire head into the tub.

“You feral.”

In reply, Rat just shakes his head like a goddamn dog, spraying water all over Hog.

Hog shoves him for the impertinence, and they end up in a tussle in the dust, Roadhog holding Rat down and forcibly brushing his teeth while the kid laughs and laughs and laughs.

Once he’s satisfied with Rat’s cleanliness, Hog goes to dress properly and pack up and ready the bike. By now it’s a fine art and doesn’t take him long, and he’s moved on to refreshing their water supplies when Rat returns from farewelling Biggs and the other Ghost Boys. The men disappear with a quiet uncanniness Hog recalls from Mako’s days in the ALF, walking out into the desert and seeming to vanish much quicker than they should, given the endlessly flat terrain.

“Where to, Boss?” Hog asks, once Rat is ready. All-in-all, this has been a successful job and after the relative quiet Hog is itching to get back to some more mayhem. If the kid’s good for nothing else, it’s mayhem.

Except, this time, Rat just grins, and says:

“East! To Pinksville.”

Hog’s blood runs cold, his voice snapping, “No,” before he’s really had a chance to second guess it.

Hog’s never second-guessed their route before and Rat scowls, taken aback.

“Er . . . wha’? Watcha mean, ‘no’?”

Hog stands, turning towards his employer. (Hard to remember that, sometimes, but . . . that’s their relationship, right? If not that, then—)

“Said no,” he repeats, figuring it’d be against his whole gimmick to back out now. “Pick somewhere else.”

This earns him a suspicious squint. “Why? You banned or somethin’? ‘Cause that won’t be a problem, mate! Not with what I’ve got f’rus.” He grins, winking, and Hog sighs.

“We’re not hittin’ the Pink. Not even you’re dumb enough to try that.” It’s a good enough reason. Not the main one, but . . . good enough. Pinksville is a fortress. Everyone knows it.

“We’re . . . wha’? You think we’re gonna blow up the Pink?” Rat laughs. Actual roaring, knee-slapping laughter. “Oh, flippin’ ‘eck no. Me life wouldn’t be worth livin’. No, no mate. Just got business, is all.”

Roadhog forces his fist to unclench and bites down the urge to smack the dumb kid in the mouth. Being laughed at is a hair-trigger and always was, but he reminds himself it’s Junkrat. The kid is a half-mad little shit but he isn’t mean. Not like that, or at least not to Hog.

“What kinda ‘business’?”

Rat’s emotions are always a roller coaster and at the words he switches from amused to cagey like the freakin’ Tower of Terror. “Just . . . personal shit. Borin’. Nothin’ you gotta worry about.”

Hog sighs. Rat has a whore. Figures, he supposes, and he tells himself his annoyance is at the idea of his boss, of all people, getting caught up in some working girl’s  _Pretty Woman_  role play and not . . . any other reason. Shit. As if he doesn’t have enough trouble keeping Rat and his treasure safe from every two-bit junker and greedy suit, now he’s got a scrap-digging molls to add to the list.

“We’ve had enough downtime, Boss,” Hog tries, because saving Rat from himself isn’t just part of his bleedin’ job, it  _is_  the job. “I wanna kill shit.”

Except Rat just waves a hand, dismissive, and lurches around to the sidecar. “We’ll find some scavvers on the way, ‘ey? That’ll fixya right up. C’mon c’mon c’mon, we don’t got all day!” Then he hops into the car, and apparently the discussion is over.

Hog just heaves another sigh, and prepares to head east.

* * *

Pinksville, a.k.a. The Pink, is, to put it mildly, Australia’s most famous brothel. Located not far from Boulia, south-west Queensland, it’s about as close to the coast as a place can get while still being Outback. Which suits the residents just fine; means they can run under their own law while still picking up business from the disaster tourists and weekend road warriors coming in from Brisbane, searching for a taste of the apocalypse.

In reality, the brothel is only the Pink’s public face; a sprawling Federation-style farmhouse facade functioning as the gatehouse to the true town, nestled in a canyon gully and otherwise functionally inaccessible, either trough terrain or through traps. No one other than the residents—almost all women—has ever truly been inside, although plenty have given it a go. To their detriment.

Roadhog is here because, three days ago, a nervous kid knocked on his door with a message, beamed in over the wireless at what constituted Junkertown’s Post Office.

_Mama Vember has a job for you._

And, Hog had to admit, he’d been curious. He hasn’t heard that name in nearly ten years, not since the core blew, taking the ALF with it.

He’d never met the woman directly. Mako had been frontline shock-troops while Vember did spy shit. Getting intel and assassinating the Arnie sympathizers and apologists, often both at once. He’d been angry, at first, that she’d gone to the trouble to track him down—it hadn’t even occurred to him she might not’ve made the connection between the man Mako Rutledge had been and the beast Roadhog was, not when it was Mama Vember—and had been halfway to paying a less-than-friendly visit, teach the old bitch some manners about letting the past be the past, when curiosity had won out and calmed him down.

Hence, here he is.

The grounds around the Pink are lush and well-watered, spilling over with acacia and eucalypts, and a few seedy bastards eye Hog as he ascends the farmhouse steps. The barely dressed little things on their laps giggle, tits bouncing in the shade-cooled air, and Hog ignores the lot them as he pushes his way through the house’s suspiciously sturdy flyscreen.

Beyond, is air conditioned coolness and a little foyer, filled with lounges in gilt and plush red velvet, windows draped with red gauze. There’s a desk not-quite opposite the door, and the woman behind it chirps, “Well, hello lovely. Aren’t you a big boy,” as Hog enters.

The words are friendly and the woman is barely more dressed than the girls outside, but she’d come up to Hog’s shoulder, easy, and has the sort of arms that could snap most men in two. Hog’d put money on there being a shotty, at minimum, in easy reach.

“Got a message,” Hog says. “From Mama Vember.”

“That right?” The woman eyes Hog up. “Guessin’ from the getup you’re this ‘Roadhog’ fella?” Then, when Hog says nothing in reply: “Chatty, too. Right then. Stace! Stace, getcha perky little butt out here!” This last called back deeper into the house.

Hog waits, impassive, as light footsteps and heavy grumbling approach from one of the corridors. The girl who emerges—presumably the aforementioned Stace—is a thin little slip dressed in the same gauzy scraps as the others. She puts of a good front when she sees Roadhog, but he can still smell the fear behind her glossy pout.

“Ooh, you’re a biggun. Whatcha in for, sweetheart?”

“He’s not a customer,” the bouncer says. “He’s here to see Mama.”

Stace perks up considerably at that, dropping both the fear and the flirtation. “Oh, right. You that enforcer, then? Gonna get that cunt for what ‘e tried with Lili?”

“Stace . . .”

“Right, right. Sorry. This way then, Mr. Bigbloke.”

Hog follows her into the house, to a comfortable little sitting room done up less like a knocking shop and more like an upmarket B&B. “Getcha a cuppa, lovely? Some bikkies?”

“Black,” Hog says. “No sugar.”

“Right-o.”

She darts off, and Hog makes himself comfortable on one of the lounges. He doesn’t have to wait long; Stace is back almost immediately with a little tea-set and plate of Anzac biscuits. She leans over a bit too close when she puts them down, eyes burning bright as she says: “You get ‘im. You get ‘im good, for us. We won’t forget it, I swear. We don’t forget men like ‘im and we don’t forget the men who aren’t, either. No matter what—”

“Stacy, darling. That’ll be all.”

Stace jolts, eyes going wide like she’s been caught with a hand in the proverbial Anzacs. When she straightens, her eyes are downcast and she’s worrying her lip, smearing brilliant ruby red across her teeth. “Yes, Mama.” Then she gives a curt little bow, and scampers from the room, closing the door behind her.

Hog watches her go, then turns his attention to the room’s latest addition. Mako had never met the woman, but he’d seen pictures, and Mama No Vember—once the Cabaret Queen of Coober Pedy—looks more-or-less like he expected, if a little more weathered around the edges. Tall and thin and stern, Vember is more like a private school headmistress than a madam, for all she’s dressed in a long, cream silk robe trimmed with an entire aviary’s worth of feathers.

“Mister Rutledge,” she says, voice as dark and rough as a coal mine. “Thank you for coming. And I’m sorry to ask this, but . . .”

Hog knows what she wants, and his first instinct is rage at the impertinence of it. He should leave. Get up, storm out. Maybe do some damage on the way. Because Mako Rutledge is dead, and any dolled-up bitch that thinks otherwise needs to be taught a lesson.

He should, but . . .

But.

Vember has a scar. Two scars, really; one running across the bridge of her nose, the other sliced down over her eye. Shameful and ugly things, and Mako knows, because when he takes off his mask, Vember can see he’s got the same.

She exhales. Just a tiny little breath, but her shoulders slump like she’s just managed to drop a heavy burden.

“Thank you,” she says. “I wasn’t sure if . . .” She stops, looks away. “Thank you.”

“You had a job.” Mako, Roadhog, isn’t here for chitchat and he isn’t here to rehash old wars and apocalyptic failures.

Still. Without the filters, the biscuits smell appealing. He leaves the mask off, and takes one.

Vember’s job is the sort of thing that’s no surprise, given the business she runs:

“A man, Rick Jones, took something he hadn’t paid for. I’d like you to take something of his in return. Something . . .  _irreplaceable_. I’ll leave the details up to you, but he has to survive. Payment is two grand, cash, half up front.”

“Five.”

“Three, and perhaps we can arrange some . . . other services to your liking.”

“Cash only.”

Vember inclines her head, corner of her lip curling up in a way Hog thinks means she’s impressed. Not many men, he supposes, would turn down an offer of cunt at the Pink, but if all Hog wanted was a warm, wet hole, he’d make like his namesake and stick his dick in a handful of mud.

“Three and a half, then.”

“Yeah, all right.” Not the best money he’s gotten, but cash is cash and Jones is some foreign NGO suit who gets his fun raping four-foot whores in disaster zones, thinking the law won’t catch him. He’s right enough about that part, but wrong to think the cops mean jack shit to someone like Mama Vember when it comes to settling debts.

Jones doesn’t even have the decency to hide, and Hog finds him easy enough in his apartment in Mount Isa. He tries a bribe, because they all do, and the money is far more than what Hog is being paid.

“That’s . . . that’s how men like you work, isn’t it?” Jones stammers, struggling weakly beneath Hog’s palm. “Nothing personal, right? Just . . . just business.”

“Yeah,” says Hog. “Just business.” And then presses down on the handle of the bolt cutters, and cuts Rick Jones’s tiny fucking dick right off.

After all, what’s a business without a reputation?

He brings the severed dick and ballsack with him back to the Pink. Mama Vember (and, for that matter, Stace and the other girls) are so pleased they give him the full five grand and a good meal and night’s rest for his trouble.

“There’ll be more work, in future,” Vember says, as Roadhog is leaving. “Dangers of the business, sadly.”

Hog just nods. Years later and miles to the west, he’ll learn the phrase  _Bullshit Tax_  and add Mama Vember to his list of clients that don’t have to pay it. It’s a short list. Today, however, all he says is:

“Y’know how to find me.”

And she does, and will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Cos in the Sunshine State, where fun times await_  
>  _And the cops don't get no dumber_  
>  _Even your big city streets that are bringing the heat_  
>  _Have got nothing on a[Queensland Summer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdOwFTo4Q3I)._


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... This really should be, like, three chapters but oh well. Pacing? I have _heard_ of it...
> 
> Minor **content warning** that this chapter features a PTSD-induced anxiety attack.

They do manage to blast through two junker convoys on their way across the border. Hog supposes the delineation doesn't mean much any more; nowadays, Australia looks more like a doughnut than a continent, the entire middle, the part they call “the Outback”, excised into no-man’s-land by the government after the crisis. Still, he stops for a little while at what used to be Tobermorey Station, looking east and then west and then east again, while Junkrat scurries around scrounging for loot, oblivious to the significance.

It's only about four hundred Ks to Pinksville from Tarlton Downs, meaning they do it easily in a day, even with the interruptions. They start seeing more vehicles as they approach Boulia. Not just slap-dash junker cars, but the too-shiny, too-slick four-wheel-drives and utes of coastal tourists. At least one bus even has the name of the tour company stencilled on the side. Junkrat throws a few flashbangs after that one, sneering and cursing up a storm. Hog doesn't try and stop it.

The Pink’s farmhouse, when they approach, looks more-or-less like Hog remembers. Bigger trees, maybe, and a different scattering of vehicles parked out front. Hog leaves the bike around behind an enormous semi, Rat leaping from the sidecar even before they've stopped. Kid’s been practically vibrating the bolts apart with his enthusiasm, alternating between trying to stand and hanging his head out the side like a goddamn dog. Hog sighs and tells himself he should've expected as much, even as he's slowly mounting the brothel steps. Sure, they fool around alone in the desert, but Mako knows full well a lot of men will do the same, when women aren't there to see. It doesn't mean jack shit. And Mako is too bloody old—and Roadhog too bloody . . . Roadhog—to think otherwise.

His boot’s just hit the verandah when he hears the screaming. It's from inside the brothel, where Rat is, and instinct kicks in, Hog lunging across the boards and hurtling through the screen door, hand reaching for his gun. As he does, he bursts into:

“—ison Fawkes! You've got a lotta nerve showin’ back up here you legless cunt!”

Hog recognises the woman speaking from the last time he was here, though she's older and he never did know her name. She's standing in the middle of the receiving room, hands on her hips, corset and panties barely big enough to contain her rich, amber skin.

Rat is standing right in front of her, and even from behind Hog can feel the gormless,  _aw shucks_  grin he's giving as he throws open his arms and says: “Aw, Lin, c’mon darl. Y’know y’ missed me!”

“Never!” the woman, Lin, declares, with feeling, before launching herself into Rat’s arms.

Hog’s half-way reaching to haul her off before he realises it's not an attack; Rat is laughing, pulling himself upright to lift Lin from the ground as she buries her face in his neck. When the hug is over, he puts her down gently and she holds his face in her hands and says, “Welcome back, Jay you bastard.” Then, called over her shoulders: “Girls! Girls, look. Jamie’s back!”

The next few minutes are a flurry of flesh and lace, as a dozen women emerge from the building, in various states of undress, all with the apparent purpose of smothering Junkrat under an avalanche of hugs and kisses. There's so much excited chatter Hog can't keep up with it all, so instead stands by the door, feeling oddly bereft. This is . . . not the reaction he'd been expecting. Either Rat is the best damn john on the continent or—

“You don't call, you don't write . . .”

Mama Vember looks exactly like Hog remembers her, the sea of girls parting immediately to let her through, regal in a billowing peacock-patterned silk robe. Despite her words, she approaches Rat with outstretched arms and the softest expression Hog has ever seen on her stern, handsome face. And for his part, Rat practically leaps at her, gathering her up in his arms with a gleeful:

“Mum! Happy birthday!”

 _Oh,_  thinks Roadhog.  _Oh._

Then, almost immediately, Rat is turning around, one hand still on Vember— on  _his mother’s_  back as he all-but presents her with a:

“Hoggie! Hoggie, look! It's me Mum! It's her birthday!”

“That was last week, sweetheart.”

Rat’s face scrunches in on itself. “Wha’ . . . really?”

“Yes dear, but thank you for remembering.” She kisses him on the cheek, then holds out her hand to Roadhog, palm facing downwards. “Noelle Fawkes,” she says, eyes gleaming with a mischief Hog has come to know very well, this last year. “Thank you for keeping my son in one piece.”

“Two thirds!” Rat corrects.

Hog just snorts, taking the hand and pressing the snout of his mask against the back.

“Hoggy’s great, Mum,” Rat enthuses. “Just like you said! Even better!”

His scowl is hidden behind the mask but Hog tilts his head, questioning, and Vemb— Shit.  _Noelle_  says:

“After Jamie’s little discovery he was having trouble finding . . . someone reliable. I've always found your work exceptional, so you were my first recommendation. It's good for a mother to know her son’s not out there on his own.”

 _You can't have one rat,_  Roadhog thinks, quite suddenly and clearly.  _They go mental._ He'd heard that once, hadn't he? Decades ago. Funny, because pigs are the same. Social, even if people assume otherwise. It's why Mako had always liked them, had loved playing with the kunekune those few times they'd gone back to visit Nan when he'd been a kid.  _You're a shark who wants to be a hog,_  Dad had told him, more than once, grinning and ruffling his hair.

( _Pigs are important,_  Nan had said.  _Good for food, good for trade. And cute. But when they go feral, they destroy the land. Good and bad, together. The mako is the same. He's a guardian, but dangerous when not respected._ )

Shit. He doesn't want to think about this.

Instead, it occurs that Junkrat had been looking for him, that day they first met. Sitting on his verandah, excited and waiting and ready with his offer. The one that, once they'd settled on it, he'd never tried to screw Hog over on, just like Hog’s never been screwed over (pun intended) by the Pink. The Pink that looks after its own. The Pink that doesn't forget who treats it right and who doesn't.

Suddenly, a whole bunch of shit is starting to make sense.

“—c’mon! You've shown me yours, now I get to show you mine! Ahahaha!”

“What?”

Hog blinks, looking down to where Rat is tugging on his arm, trying to get him to move.

“Me ‘ouse!” Rat repeats. “C’mon!”

Rat is practically vibrating out of his boot with excitement, so Hog lets himself be lead deeper into the brothel, Noelle walking up front and listening to her son babble about the time he's been away.

Eventually, they come to a door Hog’s never been through, and Rat opens it by slapping his left palm onto a reader. The thing beeps and flashes green, and Hog hears the sound of heavy bolts thudding back.

When the door swings open, it's obvious the wood is just a facade; behind it is a good ten centimetres of reinforced steel, swinging open like a bloody bank vault. Noelle goes through first, stating, “We have a guest,” to whomever’s beyond.

Rat gestures for Hog to go next, and so he does, emerging into a sort of mantrap that looks like it's blasted from sheer rock and reinforced with concrete and steel. A gangway runs about eight feet up, two women standing on it, clutching rifles and watching Hog with intense concentration. Above them, auto-turrets on the ceiling track his every move.

This is not junker tech. No wonder no one’s ever made it into Pinksville and lived to tell the tale.

The vault door slamming behind him puts Hog on edge, but Rat is lurching happily through the space, waving and greeting the women above. They return the gesture with good-natured insults and Hog forces himself to relax. This is Rat— is  _Jamie's_ home. They're safe here. Maybe.

“This way, please.”

Noelle is gesturing towards some kind of multi-armed drone that's appeared from who-knows-where.

“I’ll need a recording of your bioprint,” Noelle explains. “Otherwise you’ll find the turrets inside . . . disruptive.”

Hog’s eyes flick between Rat and the drone, then back again.

“If I say no?”

Noelle shrugs. “Then you'll have to stay front-of-house. Jamie's already on file, so he can come and go. If you want to accompany him, you'll have to trust us.”

“Don't want much, do ya?”

“Up to you. Though I have to say we don't get many people turning the offer down.” Noelle pauses, then: “None, in fact. Usually it's the opposite.” Hog still hesitates, though, so she adds: “You understand the trust here goes two ways.”

“Yeah,” says Hog, flicking one more glance at Junkrat. “I get it.”

Then he steps forward, and allows the scan. It's painless and instantaneous, for all his trepidation; the drone flashes a light at him, then beeps. Then it's done. He is, at least temporarily, an accepted resident of Pinksville.

The door leading out of the mantrap is no bigger than the one leading in, and even sturdier and more reinforced. Rat darts through eagerly as soon as it swung open enough for him to squeeze past, and Hog has to force himself to keep his hands by his side. Then not reach out and drag his idiot boss back, insist he let Roadhog go first.  _It's his home,_  he keeps telling himself.  _He grew up here._

The mantra doesn't help.

Beyond the door is a rough-hewn stairwell, cut straight into the rock and barely big enough for Hog in any direction. The stairs climb up and twist around, preventing clear sight, and Hog has to jog to keep up. By the time he stumbles into the light his lungs are thick and heavy, and he grabs Rat’s arm by habit as he folds double and tries to get his breathing under control.

“‘Oggy? ‘Oggy, whatcha do to y’self y’big lug? ‘Ere.”

A hogdrogen canister is pressed into his hand and Roadhog jams it into his mask, sighing as the acrid burn of the gas cuts through phlegm and scar tissue. Rat is still nearby, but his attention is distracted by more voices, all of them women, greeting and shrieking. Hog coughs, twice, and pulls up his mask just enough to spit the gob of yellow phlegm onto the ground.

The he looks up. And gets his first view of Pinksville.

The place is . . . shit. The place is little a little damn slice of heaven, tucked away in western Queensland. They’ve emerged at one end of what looks to be more fissure than canyon; a big rent in the rich red rock with no obvious other ways out. Green overflows from every crevice, more than Hog’s seen in decades, from eucalypts to acacias to grasses and ferns and neat little plots overflowing with vegetables and fruit. At the far end of the canyon, water cascades down the rock, and a stream runs the canyon’s length. There are numerous buildings scattered throughout the space—everything from stuccoed brick constructions to gauze-draped bell tents—and people move in and between them, tending to plants or weaving cloth or simply resting.

Almost everyone Hog can see is a woman, although he catches sight of what looks like an old queen and a young twink, sewing in the shade, plus a few others whose gender Hog couldn’t guess at. More importantly, though, there are children here. Actual running, playing children, laughing and clean and well-fed. There are kids in Junkertown too, of course, but they’re hardscrabble orphans for the most part; no one raises a kid in Junkertown if they can help it. The Pink’s kids, though? They just look like kids.

“—get settled in. I’m sure the girls will want to put on something special for you this evening.”

Hog blinks, tearing his eyes away from the idyllic scene in front of him.

Noelle is speaking to her son, who’s apparently extracted himself from his welcoming committee. Rat gives his mother one last hug, then he’s turning to grab Hog’s hand with an impatient, “C’mon c’mon c’mon! I’ll show y’ me ‘ouse. Only fair, right, seein’ as how I’ve already seen yours. Ahahahaha!”

Hog follows along when he’s pulled, too dazed to resist. He’d been expecting . . . Hell. He doesn’t know  _what_  he’d been expecting Pinksville to look like on the inside. But it certainly hadn’t been this.

And Rat, what? Grew up here?

“Nah, mate,” Rat says, and it’s only when he does that Roadhog realizes he’d said that last bit out loud. “Well, I mean. Eventually? I was prolly, mm . . . Eight? Nine? When Mum started settin’ this place up. ‘Course, was a bit rougher in those days. Just the ‘ore’ouse, really.”

They pass an autoturret, one of many. The tech is sleek and well-made, if not necessarily new. Omnic in origin, though, and Hog wonders just how much of Junkrat’s treasure goes into keeping this place secure.

Out loud, he asks:

“Why’dja leave?”

Rat waves a hand. “Everyone says, ‘Aw, that Junkrat. ‘E’s a mad cunt, eh? Musta been the rads fried ‘is brain.’ Nah mate. What fried me brain was growin’ up with a dozen sisters and more aunts than blowflies, ahahahaha!” Then, once he’s done laughing at his own joke: “Had t’get out, din’ I? See ‘ow the other ‘alf lived, the junker cunts we’d get in who’d spin yarns about mutant dingoes and omnic treasure.”

He’s still an Outback brat, Hog reminds himself. The whole area being excised by the government means no one born inside it is technically a full Australian citizen. In theory there’s some sort of provisional arrangement but actually getting  _out_ —getting to the coast, getting a passport, an identity—is a pipe dream. A very, very expensive pipe dream.

“‘Ere we go. ‘Ome sweet ‘ome!”

It's a tent, a sort of canvas marquee nestled between the trees and the rocky cliff face. It is also very obviously a Junkrat Special, painted with leering smiley faces in garish yellows and oranges. Junkrat barges through the flap, which isn't even tied, let alone trapped or locked, and Hog has to physically repress the twitching in his hands and the shudder beneath his skin.  _This is his home,_  he reminds himself. Then steps forward to follow the kid inside.

The canvas is tall enough and covers a reasonable area, but nonetheless Hog is expecting a tight fit inside the space with Junkrat. After all, neither of them are small men. What he's not expecting is for the tent to be merely the foyer of a much, much larger space, one carved—or, more likely, blown—from the canyon wall itself.

The space lights up as they enter, LED sunstrips flaring to life as Rat passes, running his hands along piles of scrap and components and half-built, tarp-covered machines.

There's a partitioned-off space that seems to serve as a bedroom, judging from the nest of bedding and personal items. Some photos, too, holos flickering against the red-rock walls. There's a younger version of Noelle in one, arm around a gawky boy that can only be Junkrat, circa age preteen. The other photo looks like it was taken backstage at a show. It's Noelle in a wig-cap and half makeup, being pulled into a crushing hug by a long-faced blonde woman who seems familiar in a way Hog can't place. Neither of them look to be much older than Junkrat is now.

He must stare too long because, next thing he knows, Rat has materialised at his elbow with a:

“That's me Ma.”

“Oh.” Right. Makes sense. Except Rat immediately follows it up with a:

“Before I killed ‘er, I mean.”

He says it so matter-of-factly, voice unchanged from its usual larrikin’s lilt, that Hog turns to stare.

Rat laughs. “That sounds bad, don't it? When I was born, I mean.”

“Oh. Right.”

“There was a man,” Rat adds, this time not quite so casually. “A long time ago. He . . . he hurt ‘er. Ma, I mean. Raped ‘er. She an’ Mum, they wanted to get rida the baby, but things back then . . . they’s pretty mental. They found someone who made Ma drink somethin’ but . . . Guess I was a survivor, even then. Didn't do me in but made Ma real sick. Lived long enough to pop me out, then—” He makes a sound halfway between a bug-splat and a fart. “‘S all she wrote.”

“Shit,” Hog says, because he doesn't know how else to respond.

Rat shrugs, but his flesh fingers are flaking the paint on his metal arm. “Mum ‘ated me for a bit after that, dumped me with Gran in Yuendumu and bailed out to do her ALF”—he pronounces it as one word, not an acronym—”thing in th’ desert. ‘Cept then the omnium went boom and . . .”

He trails off, but Hog just nods. Not many towns in the central desert, but Yuendumu had been one of them. It’d also been in just the right place to get a good hot blast of the core’s fallout, weak enough that it didn't kill all at once, strong enough to really make its victims suffer.

“Gran didn't make it,” Rat continues. “Don't remember much about that time but I remember . . . I remember that. So I was on me own f’r a bit. Not too bad, though. Got picked up by Gran’s neighbour an’ ‘is mob an’ started walkin’ north. By the time Mum tracked me down again I was a right little desert rat.”

“That where you learnt bush tucker?”

“Yup!” Rat grins, legitimately proud despite the horror of his story. “I woulda been . . . seven, maybe? Somethin’ like that. Caked in mud t’keep the sun off, diggin’ up grubs an’ makin’ a ruckus. Mum took one look at me an’ burst into tears; said I looked so much like Ma, that I was all she had lefta ‘er. When she left, I went with ‘er. Think she ‘ad some idea to maybe get me inta th’ evacs, but . . .”

But it would've meant jail for Noelle, same as it would've for Mako, if he'd tried to leave back in those early days after the explosion. The ALF had been classified as domestic terrorists for years and the best any member could've hoped for was life in prison. After the core, people started talking for real about bringing back the death penalty. It didn't happen, but keeping the remains of the ALF penned in with the radiation was considered good enough instead.

Rat laughs, too loud and too sudden, straightening his spine and arching his arms back to press against the ceiling. He's ditched the harness and kit and tire somewhere, and the view of his lean stomach bared and stretched out would be appealing, were Hog’s fists not currently clenched against the old, sick feelings of guilt and failure.

“So that's me sob story,” Rat announces, once his spine has cracked its last and he's settled back down into his usual hunch. “‘Snot so bad. And once we settled ‘ere and Mum set up th’ knockin’ shop . . . got pretty good, really. Can't complain.”

And Hog . . . Hog’s fists itch and he wants to scream and to hit something, all at once. Because Rat is right; as far as the Outback goes, turns out he'd been lucky. Certainly moreso than the kicked-about, half-starved Junkertown brat Hog had been imagining.

But, even still . . .

Even still. Who would Jamison Fawkes have been, in the country Mako had once believed in as a boy?

He must be silent for too long, staring at the brief loop of the old photo, because Rat just laughs and slaps him on the shoulder. “C’mon. ‘Nuffa this memory lane bullshit. Dump yer stuff wherever and I'll give y’ th’ tour. You'll love it ‘ere, and th’ girls’ll love you.”

He gives Hog two more friendly pats, then wanders out to the entrance of his home. After a moment, as always, Hog follows.

* * *

In the end, Hog ditches the guns and the armour and, after considerable thought, his mask. The mask hides his scar and his emotions and his humanity, as well as keeps the dust from his lungs and the sun from his eyes. He's not quite as attached to it as some of his own mythologising makes out, and in the Pink there are no junkers to terrify or rad dust to filter, and his scar is no different to the one Noelle wears openly. Plus, it'll be good to give his skin a bit of a breather; being under leather all day makes him break out something chronic, which at his age is an indignity he can do without.

Pinksville has a proper garage for its own vehicles, and Rat helps him re-park the bike and lug the rest of their stuff inside. After some consideration, Hog takes the small bag of civvie clothes he keeps but rarely uses, figuring that if he's going mufti he may as well go whole hog, pun intended. This choice, as it turns out, is proven to be the correct one the second Rat starts nagging him into a swim.

“Water’s clean, I swear it. No rads, no crocs, no nothin’. Comes right up from the artesian basin.” Junkrat is wearing board shorts two sizes too big for him and is hauling floaties and an inflatable duck ring, and really Hog was convinced from the first word. He just didn't feel like interrupting Rat when the kid was on a tear. He's so pretty when he begs.

“What's with the wallabies?” Hog asks as they walk up to the pool. The little things are everywhere, fat and happy and tame enough to pat.

“Food,” Rat says. “An’ skins ‘n’ shit. John”—he means in the generic sense, not the name—”once convinced Mum they'd be better than the goats we were tryin’ to run. Native ‘n’ all, y’know? He sold us the first three and . . .” Rat gestures around. “Now we cant get rida the bastards.”

“Huh,” says Hog, reaching down to scratch one of the curious critters behind the ears. They are . . . kinda cute. Mako had been a vegetarian, once upon a time, back before the world went to shit, back in the days before he'd watched packs of starving Junkertown kids beat each other to pulp over the picked-clean carcass of a goanna, like it was the only meal they'd seen for days.

The pool is exactly as spectacular up close as it looked from afar, waterfall plunging into a deep, wide pit in the rock, overhung with trees and ferns. Rat kicks off both limbs and dives in with surprising grace, Hog follows more sedately, and the water is warm and fresh and clear and perfect.

Some of the girls come down to join them, dressed either in tiny cozzies or nothing at all, splashing and shrieking with Rat while Hog just lets himself float, eyes closed and half asleep beneath the shade. He hasn't felt this relaxed, this  _clean_ , in . . . shit. Decades. Maybe Roadhog never has. He’ll decide what he feels about that later.

Rat is a surprisingly good—and quiet—swimmer when he wants to be, which is why the first Hog notices of his approach is when he's trying to balance a tinny on Hog’s gut.

He ends up sitting with Rat and the girls by the edge of the pool as the sun sets, lounging back with his head on a rolled towel. Rat and the girls chatter in loud, animated voices, using Hog’s limbs and belly as pillows, and maybe he should mind but he doesn't. Because the sun is warm, and the air is cool, and Rat is safe and home and Hog . . . Hog sleeps. Just a little.

* * *

The next day, Rat scurries out early to get to work tinkering with the Pink’s various defenses. Pinksville might be a slice of paradise in Hell, but that's because it's inhabitants work hard to make it so, either front of house or out back. Hog isn't one to slack off, which is how he ends up in a short-sleeved pink button-down and cream shorts, sitting in the Pink’s foyer, playing bouncer.

It's not the most stimulating job in the world, but the girls bring him tea and bikkies and a tablet full of books. He picks some old political thriller called  _Secret City_ , mostly because it's as thick as Junkrat’s skull, and settles in for a long read.

He's there maybe two hours when one of the girls comes to stand in front of him. She's wearing not much more than panties and a neglige and the smell of old sex, and she's shifting from foot to foot, biting her lip and looking bashful in a way Hog wouldn't expect from a pro.

“Yeah?” he prompts, when she doesn't seem to know how to start. He's not the most people person in the Outback, but if one of the girls is having problems he wants them to know he's happy to bust some skulls on their behalf. For more reason that one.

Expect what the girl blurts out is:

“Kayes says y’r good f’r a cuddle.”

Hog blinks. He knows “Kayes”, a.k.a. Kaylee, as one of Junkrat’s harem. Mostly because she’d spent hours last night snuggled up under his arm. ( _“I like big blokes,”_  she’d told him.  _“And it's nice to have one that don't want nothin’ from me, y’know?”_ )

“It's just . . .” the girl continues, “I'm on break for a bit, yeah? Wanna get a bit’a kip, an’ it'd be nice t’ave it . . . y’know.” She makes a vague gesture at Roadhog.

It is, he thinks, perhaps the oddest proposition he's ever gotten, which is saying something. Still. It's not like Hog is going anywhere, and he's gotten used to being a pillow after being pawed at by Junkrat for months. So he just grunts in assent, shifting his legs and lifting his arm to make room.

The girl lights up like one of Rat’s explosions at the invitation, and her obvious delight . . . stirs something deep down in Roadhog. She's twenty if she's a day and not even in the same state as Hog’s type, so it isn't that. Maybe it's just his heart again, going funny on him in his old age as the girl curls up against his chest.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh, yeah. Kayes was right. You're mad comfy, you are.” Then, as if she's just realised it, she says, “I'm Ashley.”

“Mako,” Hog says, before he's thought about it. Shit.

Well, he supposes, watching Ashley from the corner of his eye as she makes herself at home, too late to take it back now.

* * *

Unfortunately for Roadhog, word in the brothel travels fast, and by the end of the day he's become the Official Napping Place for the girls between their clients. Noelle even rearranges the furniture, replacing the three-seater couch with a huge circular sort of thing that fits more girls.

“It's good for business,” Noelle tells him, smirking. “Now everyone who comes through the door will be imaginin’ himself in your place.”

“Should fuckin’ charge ya,” Hog mutters, though not too loudly, lest he wake Sash and Minmin.

Junkrat, of course, finds the whole situation hilarious. “Mate, half the bloody Outback would kill t’be inya position!”

Which, of course, is why they're not. More than one of the girls has made some comment along the line of it being nice to be close to a man without having to put on a show or open a hole.

“Y’sure y’ don't wanna get some in here? I reckon Sash and Kayes would be up for it.”

Hog just growls in annoyance, rolling over to wrestle Rat into the mattress. It's late and they're back in Rat’s cave, curled together in the bed that smells like dust and motor oil.

Rat laughs as Hog tries to shut him up, but cuts off abruptly when Hog growls: “Fifty-fifty. No fuckin’ sharin’.”

It sounds tough in Hog’s head but the moment it comes out Rat goes still and quiet, and when he dares look he sees bright orange eyes regarding him with an expression Hog tells himself is inscrutable, if only so he doesn't have to scrutinise it.

“Yeah,” Rat says, after a moment. “All right. No sharin’.” He’s look up at Hog with an expression that—

Shit. An expression Hog doesn't want to think about. So he presses forward, catching Rat’s lips in a kiss that's mostly a bite, and the kid moans and squirms and presses up into it.

He tells himself it's not a promise. He tells himself it isn't  _anything_ , just letting off steam after a long day of reading and serving as someone else’s pillow. He tells himself it's time  _he_  got a pillow in return, somewhere firm to rest his head and somewhere soft to sheathe his dick. He tells himself that all this is.

He never was a very good liar.

* * *

On the third day, they get trouble. Roadhog is most of the way through his book, Becks asleep and drooling on his thigh, when he hears the scream from deeper in the house. He drops the tablet, enough to wake the girl, and his eyes lock with Rhiannon, who's manning the desk.

“What—?” is as far as she gets, before the screaming comes again. This time accompanied by the muffled anger of a second, deeper voice.

The scream is also very obviously Mako’s name.

Hog lunges off the sofa, both girls behind him calling for him to  _go, go!_  The sounds get louder the further he gets into the sprawling house. Yelling, yes, but also the crashing of furniture, coming from the Silver Suite.

Hog bursts in without knocking—some of the jobs do get loud sometimes, but not like this—to see Mazza, crumpled on the floor, trying to pull the torn remains of a neglige around her while a john looms above, fist raised to strike.

“The fuck—?” the john manages, right before Roadhog grabs his forearm. “Let go! Let go of me!” He tugs, but he's a coastal boy by the look and sound of him, soft and mean from too much time chained behind a desk.

Mazza stumbles to her feet, quickly putting the rumpled, reeking bed between herself and the john. “Aw,” she says. “Y’r gonna get it now!”

“She tried to rob me!”

“Fuck you I did!” Mazza snarls. “I toldja I don't—”

Hog holds up his free hand to silence her, and she does, slumping against the wall with a scowl. A dark, angry bruise is starting to form around her lip, blood trickling down her chin. Unfortunate. Noelle doesn't like the girls working with injuries, says it sends the wrong message. Meaning Mazza’s going to be out back until she heals.

“What. Happened?” Hog growls to the john.

“I paid for a service,” the john snaps, words precise like drone strikes behind gritted teeth. “When I pay for a service, I expect to receive it.”

There's a small pile of cash on the bedside table; two oranges and a blue, so fifty bucks. Payments are done up front, at the desk, but room tips aren't unheard of.

“What ‘service’?”

The john’s lips thin, cheeks colouring. “That's my—”

“‘E wanted to root me up th’ clacka!” Mazza announces, with a whores’s shamelessness.

The john growls, but doesn't disagree.

Roadhog says:

“Can't buy what's not f’sale.” Mazza doesn't do anal. Hog knows this because yesterday she had a conversation about it with Ruby and Minmin over the table of Hog’s gut. The other girls were trying to convince her it was all right, really, and would even help her with her first time. ( _“Go slow and get prepped,”_  Hog, who does occasionally like to ride the Rat, had contributed.)

“ _She's_  for sale!” the john snaps. “She's a goddamn whore!”

“I offered to get Ru,” Mazza tells Hog. “Ru loves it up th’ bum.”

“I don't want that goddamn gook bitch, you stupid slut! I want you to do what you're fucking told!”

Hog sighs. “Why're they like this?” he asks Mazza, rhetorically, before tightening his fist around the john’s forearm.

The bones snap easy beneath Hog’s fingers, flesh shredding and muscle pulping from the pressure. The john screams, trying to drop to his knees in agony but Hog’s already hauling him out of the room.

“My arm!” the john wails. “You broke my fucking arm!”

“I'll rip it right off if y’ don't shut up,” Hog says, voice as flat and blank as his expression. “Y're disturbin’ everyone.”

This is true, and some of the other clients have even started poking their heads out from various rooms.

“F-fuck! Fuck—”

“Girls set services and prices,” Hog recites, because it's written in gold cursive on a sign in the foyer. One Hog’s been staring at for the last three days. “Don't like the rules, feel free t’fuck off.” So is that.

“Fuck you!” the john tries. “Fuck you you fat faggot cunt! I'll call the fucking cops! You can't treat me this way!”

Roadhog can and he will, and no city-snuffling pig is going to stop him. Hog has as much fear of the police as a feral bushpig does of a stall-fattened sow, assuming the cops would even come out this far, which he knows they won't.

He throws the sobbing, cursing john right out the front door, the man rolling in a bloodied heap through the dust. He staggers to his feet, clutching the ruins of his hand, tears and snot running down his face. “At least gimme my fucking pants back, you freaks!” is his parting shot.

A pair of jeans sails past Hog’s ear, thrown by Mazza who's standing behind him on the porch. “Have a nice day! Come back soon!” she calls, probably insincerely.

“I'll sue you!” the john screams. “I'll sue you right out of your miserable craphole you terrorist fucking whores!”

Hog makes no reply, just watches the john lurch back to one of the cars—a huge, shiny white rental four-by-four—and climb in. It takes the dumbfuck a few goes to get the car going without the use of his right hand, and Hog takes a moment to appreciate Rat, who can drive just fine (by Rat’s standards) without either his right hand  _or_  right leg.

Apparently Junkrat is the devil, and thinking about him summons him from the depths, because in the next moment something hard and familiar is throwing itself against Hog’s back with a: “Whereizze? Where’s the dumb— Aw. Did I miss it?”

“Miss what?”

“Hear you was rippin’ some dumb cunt’s arm off!”

“He nearly did,” Mazza enthuses. “You shoulda seen ‘im, Jay! He just”—she mimes closing a fist—” _kttch_  on the fucker’s arm. Like it was nothin’!”

“Aaaaw.” Rat throws his head back, real melodramatic, hugging himself onto Hog’s arm. “Aw, fuck I missed it! I love it when ‘e does the  _kttch_.”

“It was great,” Mazza says. “Real great. You got a real keeper there, Jay. A real fuckin’ keeper.”

And Rat, the bastard, just grins wide enough to hinge off the top of his head and says:

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

* * *

Noelle makes Hog fill in an incident report, which he finds irritating and amusing in equal measure.

“So we can keep tracka th’ troublemakers,” Rat tells him, sitting on the edge of the counter, swinging his legs like a little kid.

“Get many of ‘em?”

Rat laughs. “Used ta, in th’ early days. Then Mum got the idea t’ hire this big-ass bastard she knew from the ALF. Couplea dicks in boxes later an’ blokes started gettin’ th’ message.”

Hog looks up from under his heavy, scarred brows. Rat returns his look with affected butter-wouldn't-melt innocence.

It's Hog who looks away first. “Y’re a shifty little cunt, y’know that?”

“Y’ should be proud. Y’reputashun proceeded ya!”

“So did yours.”

“Yeah,” Rat says, and some of the manic edge seems worn off of it. It's experience that has Roadhog suspecting a trap. “I got enemies, so does Mum. Tha’s why we keep the whole Maggie ‘n’ Arthur routine . . .”

“Don't . . .”

“Why we keep it  _mum_! Ahahahaha!”

Hog just sighs, and finishes off his form.

* * *

That evening, the girls drag him to the floor show. Hog’s been watching the tour busses roll up all afternoon, bougie coastal families taking photos with the girls in the front garden while most of the regular johns surreptitiously clear out. Hog can’t think of fewer things worse than spending the evening rubbing elbows with a bunch of Aesop-stinking civvies, and had planned to retreat back into the inner Pink to escape it. Except for the fact the girls won’t let him.

“C’mon!” Ruby says, as Mazza and Kayes are each tugging on one of Roadhog’s wrists, trying to drag him into the theatre. “I’ll be fun! Jamie’ll be there.”

In the end, it’s the idea of Junkrat being trapped in a room with a bunch of strangers that has Hog capitulating. He allows himself to be pulled along by the girls into a wing of the brothel he’s not yet been to, passing through a red velvet-draped box office and into a large space that looks not unlike a recreation of the Moulin Rouge, cramped little tables clustered around a T-shaped stage, like a model’s catwalk.

The girls take Hog to a table in the corner that’s both conversely out-of-the-way and the best seat in the house. Much more spacious than the rest of the place, and with a large red velvet loveseat just for Hog.

“Where’s Rat?” he asks, looking around as the other girls take their seats around him. Gee even cracks a bottle of Chandon, the girls shrieking and giggling as they hold out their glasses.

“You’ll see ‘im in a sec,” Lin says, winking. Hog just huffs, settling himself back in his chair and telling himself the unease he’s feeling is because he’s Rat’s bodyguard, and nothing more.

Rat still hasn’t appeared when the lights go down and the music comes up, and the only thing keeping Hog in his seat is his surrounding posse, who keep patting his arms and telling him to sit tight.

The show’s MC is doing her bit, introducing the house band and welcoming all the guests. Hog isn’t really paying attention. At least not until the music changes to an oddly familiar rolling drumbeat, and the MC’s voice says:

“—ing straight in from the central wasteland, our very own desert goby, Ju-uu-unkfi-ii-ii-ish Ja-aa-ami-ii-ie!”

And  _that_? That has Hog sitting bolt upright.

“The fuck—?” is as far as he gets, right before a harmonica screams and a voice that’s both familiar-and-not blasts in with:

_“Welcome strangers, to the show_

_I’m the one who should be lyin’ low_

_Saw the knives out, turned my back_

_Heard the train comin’, stayed right on that track.”_

Hog’s pretty sure his jaw is on the table and the rest of the girls around him are whooping and laughing with glee, but he can’t bring himself to think about it because there, on the stage, is—

No. No, it’s not Junkrat. It’s  _Jamie_. In a blonde wig the size of the Eureka, face almost unrecognizable behind the makeup and voice . . . Shit. Hog’s spend the last year practically living up the kid’s arse and he’d never have guessed it. Because, as it turns out, the Rat can  _sing_.

Can sing, and can work a crowd. Rat’s wearing some kind of long robe, drop-sleeved like a kimono but without the obi, cream silk shimmering like water under the floodlights with writhing koi in gold and white and black. Rat’s hunch is gone and he’s standing straight, tall and thin, limp somehow subsumed into a strut and Hog . . . Hog, he . . .

“Shit,” he murmurs, mesmerized. Because there doesn’t seem to be anything else to say.

The crowd is lapping it up, roaring and shrieking with approval as Rat— as  _Jamie_  struts up and down the catwalk. Behind him, on the stage, some of the other Pink girls twirl around on poles as backup dancers but they’re almost incidental. They’re definitely not who everyone is looking at. Not who everyone is here to see.

“‘E’s good, izzn ‘e?” Minmin, sighing as she slumps against Hog’s arm. “I only saw ‘im once before.”

“Mama No taught ‘im, before she retired,” says Ruby. “We do all right but . . . never really bin able t’ replace ‘im, y’know? S’not the same without a Fawkes headlinin’ it.”

There are no drag shows in Junkertown, Hog knows. They’re banned. Just like everything else that competes with the Scrapyard for so-called “entertainment”. Anything else that could challenge the Queen. And, shit. What a challenger Rat would be for  _that_ title, who would've guessed?

On the stage, the music winds down and the crowd winds up; the roaring so intense Hog can feel the atmosphere in his bones more than he can hear it with his ears. Jamie is standing about midway down the catwalk, arms raised and hands twirling, like he’s both thanking the crowd and basking in their praise, all at once. In his element, perhaps, except for the way his chest heaves a touch to fast with the exertion, the way his smile is just an edge too manic. He’s in pain, Hog knows, because he’s seen the symptoms before, albeit not quite like this. Jamie’s having the time of his life, but it’s hurting him to do it. Just like always.

“Hello-oo-oo-oo, petals! Thank you for joining us. How’re we all doing out there tonight? You ready to have a good time?” When Jamie speaks, his voice is . . . not what Hog is used to. Deeper, huskier. But more proper, too. With that real-deal Sydney private school edge. Not Rat’s usual shattered glass screeching.

“I don’t think I quite heard you,” Jamie says, once the crowd’s roaring has subsided. “I said: Are you ready to have a good time?” Another riot of noise, this one loud enough to vibrate the champagne in Hog’s glass.

“Because I’m here to have a good time!” Jamie announces, microphone booming his voice throughout the theatre. “Let’s go!”

This time, the band strikes up the Hoodoo Gurus. Another old song, but that seems to be the theme, and Hog watches in fascination as a thick brass pole descends from the ceiling. Is Jamie really going to—? Not in that robe, surely, except the lyrics are starting up again, and—

_“You can’t take me anywhere_

_I’ll strip down to my underwear_

_If you give me half a chance!”_

—and the robe just seems to flush away like water. And beneath it is just all not-quite-two-meters of Jamie, dressed in nothing but a shimmering orange corset and thigh-high boots. Well, boot; he’s still wearing his prosthetics, the same ones he always does. The crowd goes mental, even more so when Jamie grips the stripper pole in his right hand and hauls himself up it like it’s nothing.

Suddenly, Hog thinks, those ridiculously cut abs are starting to make sense. Not to mention all those few times Hog’s seen Rat shimmy up and down ropes like he was born to it.

Mazza sighs, dreamily. “He makes it look so  _easy_.”

“He’s a bloke,” Ruby says, comforting. “That’s practically cheating, all that upper body strength.”

“I think he broke Mako,” Minmin giggles, waving a hand in front of Hog face.

Hog ignores her, ignores all of them, too transfixed by Jamie’s gyrations on the stage. He's still singing, belting out lyrics while hanging upside down from the rotating pole. There are other girls in the background but Hog only has eyes for Jamie and so, it seems, does the rest of the crowd. He isn't jealous, exactly—whatever it is Hog has with his boss, they've never talked about it like it was an exclusive thing—but it does . . . pinch a little that Hog would only be finding out about this side of the kid now, in a room full of tourists and strangers.

It shouldn't bother him, he knows. But it does. So he just throws back his glass of champagne in one single gulp, and tells himself to stop being soft.

* * *

The next act up is a burlesque dance—ladies jiggling about with no tops on—and Hog waits for Rat to remerge, then tells himself he doesn't care when the kid doesn't. Rat, in his grease and ash and torn-off shorts, who’s easy to grab and touch and hold and stroke. Who  _fits_ , both Roadhog’s opposite and his compliment.

Hog tries to imagine himself with Jamie hanging off his arm and finds he can't. Even with the familiar arm and leg she's too alien, too soft and clean and glamorous. Like she'll smudge or snap or shatter if Hog so much as breathes near her. And he knows that’s stupid—knows that Rat is Jamie is Rat—but . . .

But.

After the burlesque dance there's a variety act, some kids spinning about on rollerblades on a tiny circular stage, tossing each other about. It's impressive in its athleticism, although when his own head starts spinning in sympathy, Hog wonders just how much champagne he's had. His glass never seems to get empty, but neither does anyone else’s and they're starting to get a collection of bottles on the table.

There's another dance routine after the skaters, this time with a few cut twinks scattered in amongst the girls. Hog watches them with idle interest but they're not really his type; too pretty and too clean and too whole. So he drinks more champagne and lets himself drift for a while, at least until that familiar-strange voice comes back with a cry of, “Is everybody having a good time?”

Everybody is, judging by the reaction, and Jamie struts back out on stage to raucous whooping and catcalling. She's had a costume change out back, swapping the corset and boots for an orange lamé playsuit patterned in shimmering fish scales and topped with a crown made to look like the gauzy fins of a fantail. The outfit is tight enough to leave nothing to the imagination, which is confusing given somehow Jamie’s sprouted tits and hips and a crotch as flat as a Barbie doll. If it weren't for the prosthetics—still there, still the same—Hog would be forgiven for thinking he was looking at a stranger.

Apparently it is now the “gentleman’s choice” segment (“Sorry, ladies, but isn't that just the world we live in?” Jamie adds, winking), and men start happily shouting out the names of bands they want to hear covered. It's the usual medley of vintage acts: Akkadakka, Barnsey, The Gurge. Wolfmother. Powderfinger. Kylie. The suggestion of Lorde is met with an incredulous, “She's a kiwi, mate! ‘Sides, with  _this_  voice?” Which elicits raucous laughter.

Eventually, some bloke up the back shouts, “Oils!” It rings out loud in the hall, above the other voices, and soon it's picked up as a chant.  _Oils! Oils! Oils! Oils!_

On stage, Jamie laughs, waving at the crowd to be silent. “Alright alright alright! Oils it is!” She prances back to the band to confer then, a moment later, they strike up a rhythm that hits Mako like the shockwave from one of Junkrat’s bombs.

“No . . .” he mutters, too soft to be heard beneath the music, fingers clenching around the edge of the table.

Jamie, meanwhile, has moved back to the middle of the catwalk, arms outstretched and body jerking like she's being electrocuted. The crowd roars laughter, cheering and whooping, and then she lifts her mic to her lips and—

_“Few of the suns of the father, are visited upon the son_

_Hearts have been hard, our hands have been clenched in a fist too long.”_

It's like that night, seeming like another lifetime ago, belting out songs with Biggs’s mob. Like that, but infinitely worse, sitting in this gilt whorehouse on the edge of a wasteland, surrounded by aspirational junkers and slumming civvies, ears still ringing with the force of an explosion some twenty years gone. It's too much.  _Too much_.

“—ako? Mako, honey?”

Hog’s fist clenches, pain lancing through his hand and up his arm as the champagne glass shatters in his fist. Not enough, though. It’ll never be enough, not for what he's done, what he deserves.

On stage, Jamie hits the chorus ( _the hardest years, the darkest years, the roarin’ years, the fallen years_ ) and it’s— It's enough. More than enough. Hog can't breathe. Not in here. Not the same air with these people, the broken and forgotten and the gawkers and the leeches. He wants his mask. He  _needs_  his mask, he—

The sound of his chair as he pushes it back is loud, but not loud enough to be heard above the music. Which . . . good. That's good. Mako ruined Junkrat’s country. He doesn't want to ruin Jamie’s show, too. From there, he bolts. Out past the worried voices of the girls who call for him, out of the hall, out of the Pink. Into the cool of the night air, the maze of too-shiny utes and busses from the coast. Hog hates them, all of them. He wants his hook, his gun. Rat’s bombs. He wants to tear apart every fucking one of them, leave nothing but scrap in his wake and show these latte-sipping cunts what it's like. To have nothing. To fight for everything.

He wants to, but he doesn't. He can't, same reason as before; this is Jamie’s place, it's Noelle’she's already taken so much from them. He can't take this, too.

Instead, he runs. Until his vision blurs and every breath feels like napalm. He can still hear the edge of the music in the air—so silent out here, sound travels so damn far—but it's muffled. Muted. He can't hear it, only feel the words to the song in his head, in his  _bones_. Something he'll never escape, no matter how far or fast he travels. So he does what he's always done instead, dropping to his knees in the dust and pounding a fist into the ground. Then again, harder. Until he feels something in his hand give. Until the pain lances up his arm. He roars, helpless and wounded, knuckles cracked and bloody as he slams the ground again and again and again, screaming his rage into the night.

* * *

By the time he comes back to himself, the last bars of the Whitlams are fading out across the air, drowned by the dull roar of the floorshow’s audience.

Hog is sitting on his arse in the dust, staring blankly at the sky, hands nothing but mangled, broken slabs of meat and gristle. He isn't sure how long he’s there, mind blank and breath wheezing, before he hears the sound of footsteps behind him. He doesn't turn. He doesn't need to; he'd know that uneven thump-thud anywhere.

“ . . . ‘Oggy?”

Roadhog blinks. His eyes feel strange, hot and gritty, like he's been staring far too long. “Yeah,” he says, and his voice feels as rough as a burnt-out engine.

“Didn't think m’singin’ was that bad, euhuhuhu.”

A dark shape is dangled in front him. His mask. Shit.

Hog takes it, slipping the old leather over his head. It's hard with his hands being what they are, but he hears a  _tssch_  sound from behind him as long fingers help him tighten the straps.

“‘Ere.”

A canister of hogdrogen is pressed against his mask and Hog inhales, gas catching in his throat before the burn fades out to warmth as the biotics do their thing.

Hog flexes his fingers, feeling the bones start to snap back into place, as Rat drops himself down so they're sitting side-by-side.

It is Rat, too. He's lost the wig and, this close, the make-up that's seemed soft and feminine on the stage looks harsh and garish. He's back in the fish robe but it's open down the middle, and beneath it he's wearing complicated layers of padding and hose, chest smeared with the clever light and shadow make-up that'd given him the illusion of cleavage.

Quite abruptly, Hog says:

“Where'd your dick go?”

Rat blinks, confused, then laughs, loud and real. He takes Hog’s bloodied, dirtied hand and puts it between his legs, shameless as ever. “Old queen’s trick,” he says when Hog scowls, unsure what he's feeling. “Push th’ balls back up into th’ whatchacallit, then tape down th’ rest.”

Hog winces in a way that has nothing to do with his own injuries. “Shit. That hurt?”

Rat just shrugs. “‘Swhat Mum says bein’ a woman is; pain. Guess that's why’m good at it, ‘ey? Ahahahaha!”

“Yeah. Y’r pretty, as a chick.”

“So they tell me. Be feelin’ it tomorrow, but.” Rat stretches, joints and spine popping and cracking in a way that had been alarming, the first few times Hog had heard it.

“It was good. Y’ show.” Because it had been, and Rat beams with the praise, throwing himself sideways to bump against Hog’s shoulder.

“Aw, ta mate. Means a bunch, that does. Haven’t done it in so long, was worried I was gonna be rusty.”

“Hm, well. Might need more practice on the pole, I reckon. I can watchya next time, give some pointers.”

Rat laughs, pleased, and cuddles himself into Hog’s arm, flesh and metal fingers lacing around the bicep.

They go quiet for a while, listening to the muffled sounds from the Pink, staring up at brilliant spew of stars across the sky. Then Rat blurts:

“I hate ‘em. That's why I left. Not th’ girls or th’ singin’ and th’ dancin’; that's the fun shit. I miss that shit. It’s everythin’ else got too much. The fuckin’ two-bit junkers, thinkin’ they're hot shit. The tourist cunts with their posh cars, gawkin’ at us like . . . like some kinda fuckin’ sideshow. Treatin’ it all like a big fuckin’ joke, this safe little theme park version’a the Outback they've got in their ‘eads, wrapped up in a shiny fuckin’ bow. Like we aren't even  _people_ , like th’ land izzn even a real place, izzn worth shit but what it means when they bother t’ remember it exists. They come out here in fuckin’  _costume_ , like bein’ a junker, like bein’ born in th’ Outback is somethin’ they can fuckin’  _pretend_.” Jamie’s fingers are digging into the dirt, fake nails snapping from his flesh hand.

“So I ‘ate ‘em. Used t’ . . . used t’ catch m’self thinkin’ how easy it’d be t’wire up the hall. Blow the whole thing sky ‘igh at the climax. Boom!” He throws up two fistfuls of dirt to demonstrate. “But I couldn't. Couldn't do that t’Mum or th’ girls. So I left.”

Hog huffs, nodding. Because what else can he add, when he'd just been having the same thoughts?

“I been savin’ up,” Rat says, after another stretch of silence. Too much silence, tonight. Always dangerous when Rat’s around. “Real cash,” he continues. “Gold ‘n’ shit. I been thinkin’ . . . thinkin’ I gotta get out.”

“Out?”

“Outta this place. Outta this  _country_ , what's fuckin’ left’a it. Those fuckin’ cunts think they can come t’us? I wanna go t’ _them_. Showem the  _real_  fuckin’ Outback, right there live in their streets. See how they fuckin’ like it. Like livin’ knowin’ they could be shanked at any time, could ‘ave their shit taken just ‘cause someone was bigger ‘n’ stronger ‘n’ they could. See ‘ow fast they fuckin’ crumble.”

He's shaking. Always did have too many emotions rattling around that skinny frame.

Hog rumbles, thoughtful, giving his hands a final flex. Still busted up but the hogdrogen’s done its work, and he can heal the rest himself.

“Won't be easy,” he says. “Gotta get past the border”—he means the internal one, that keeps the Outback out—”and last I heard the ports’re locked down tighter’n a camel’s arse in a sandstorm.”

“Yeah.”

“We can do it, though. Bit’a cash, bit’a muscle . . .” Anything one won't sort out, the other will.

Rat's gone oddly still, barely even breathing. “Y-you, ah. You comin’ too, then?” Like he hadn't thought Hog would want to.

Funny, how it hadn't even occurred to Hog he wouldn't. He thinks of his battered old farmhouse, how hard he'd fought to keep it. How far away it now feels, how precarious. Ephemeral. In a sea of shift by sand there's only one solid island Hog’s ever found, and it comes in the form of a madly grinning maniac missing half his limbs. Hog isn't even sure when he ran aground, but now he has, the thought of going back just makes him nauseous.

So he says:

“Yeah. Fifty-fifty, right?”

He feels Junkrat exhale, feels the kid's limbs unwind and shoulders soften. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Rat ‘n’ ‘Oggie’s World Fuckin’ Tour it'll be. Mayhem ‘n’ destruction ‘n’ enough fuckin’ loot t’sink a fuckin’ freighter. Fifty-fuckin’-fifty.”

And Hog can picture it; Rat blowing up palaces in England and robbing banks in Mexico. Scrapping omnics in Japan and pissing on Lincoln in the States. And Roadhog, right there in the thick of it, laughing all the while. It'll be fucking  _glorious_.

And so he shifts his grip, falling back until he's hugging Rat against his side, staring up at the stars.

“Sounds great, Boss,” he says. “When’d we start?”

The world won't know what fucking hit it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _For soul and glory, word to Paul  
> _ _We love those great[tellers of Australian stories](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L13vI3kGMqc), right_
> 
> Hey, look. If 2-D can Sound Like That, then there's no reason Junkrat can't sing. Also known as: Hahahah welcome to my 26,000 word what-if-Junkrat-grew-up-in-a-brothel-singing-drag headcanon. Surprise! Sorry not sorry.
> 
> **B-Side! Junkfish Jamie's Pinkset**
> 
>   1. Paul Kelly, "[Dumb Things](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWhj4sVeVD0)"
>   2. Hoodoo Gurus, "[Miss Freelove '69](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_UCks8O0FA)"
>   3. Midnight Oil, "[Forgotten Years](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9eap_cKLP4)"
>   4. The Whitlams, "[You Sound Like Louis Burdett](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaQlVvzDYiw)"
> 



End file.
